Drexel’s Fall Is End of Feast for Homeless

With the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert comes an end to a feast of fashionable leftovers served to the homeless who gather nightly in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park.

No longer will dinners of blackened fish, gourmet soups, cheesecakes or desserts with berry sauce grace the park’s benches and picnic tables. For when the doors close today at Drexel’s Beverly Hills office, the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition that distributes food in the park will lose one of its major food donors.

For two years, the 400-employee office--where Michael Milken and his colleagues devised the junk-bond financing strategy that was key to both Drexel’s amazing success and rapid demise--has donated leftovers from the lavish spreads it gave its workers to the coalition to feed the homeless.

Each day, the coalition sent a car to pick up an estimated $500 worth of food that was passed over by the company’s busy financial traders.

Often the menu included tenderloin of beef, chicken breasts, gourmet soups and breads, and desserts of New York cheesecake and German chocolate cake.

“This will hurt because they were our major source of food and we have no one to replace them,” said Ted Landreth, a spokesman for the coalition, which feeds about 250 people each day at Plummer Park. “The food (from Drexel) has been phenomenal, better than at most deluxe restaurants--expensive meats, thick soups of all different varieties, lovely salads.”

Landreth said the amount of food Drexel donated varied from day to day, but he estimated that the investment bank’s average daily contribution was about 40% of the coalition’s total.

Such spreads were offered to employees free at Drexel, whose former junk-bond chief, Milken, figured out early on that the way to a businessman’s heart was through his stomach.

“It was Michael Milken’s concept that everyone should be fed well. Everyone from the traders to the maintenance people ate well,” said Neilson Cook, Drexel’s food services director.

“He figured that if they were eating at their desks, they would be less likely to eat out and give away company secrets, and he also wanted to keep the amount of time spent away from work at a minimum. If you have lunch in Beverly Hills, you have to allocate at least an hour and a half.”

Back in the junk bond heyday, Drexel provided its investment traders with their choice of anything they wanted to eat, but after the market went sour, the more elaborate a la carte menu was discarded in favor of a “discount buffet,” Neilson said. “One of the employees became concerned that leftover food was going to waste so we contacted the coalition.”

Neilson said the food giveaway program gave Drexel employees a sense that they were contributing to a worthy cause. “We wanted to do all we could to help, people felt a lot of compassion for the homeless,” he said. “It’s a shame we couldn’t do more, but we are closing our operation and (Friday) . . . is the last day there will be food available.”

Drexel’s decision this week to file for bankruptcy and let go most of its 400 employees in its Beverly Hills office has sent coalition officials scurrying to find replacement donors.

“We are very thankful for the food they have been providing us,” said Gabrielle Brill, a coalition volunteer who drove to Drexel’s kitchen entrance Wednesday afternoon to pick up containers of beef burritos, beans, rice and large plastic bags of rolls and salad.

By Wednesday, the amount of food available was already dropping off.

“No soup today?” she asked a Drexel kitchen worker. “It’s going to be difficult without soup as cold as it is.”

Brill takes the lunch-time meals to the coalition headquarters at Plummer Park where it is served to the homeless for dinner along with foods donated from an assortment of Westside restaurants.

The loss of Drexel is not the only problem confronting the coalition, which was ordered by the city of West Hollywood to move from the park by March 6 because of neighborhood complaints about crime and sanitation.

“We are trying to figure out what to do next,” Landreth said. “It has been frustrating.”

In the meantime, Drexel had to scrap its plan to serve a sumptuous last meal today of vegetable lasagna, grilled yellowtail, soup and a dessert of flan with berry sauce.

“Instead, I think we will have just deli sandwiches and salad,” said Cook, the food services director. “Not that many people plan to be around.”