John Crudele

John Crudele

Business

The Mets and Citi are feeding kids for 10 cents a meal — kind of

I’ve heard the Depression-era song “Ten Cents a Dance” and have listened to Willie Nelson singing about “when a dime bag used to cost a dime.”

But a dime today can’t buy you much — maybe not even a piece of penny candy.

Or so I thought until I came upon the very worthy charitable endeavor backed by the Mets and Citigroup.

The two — which are admirably teaming up to fight children’s hunger — are promoting their work to provide healthy meals to kids for a dime apiece.

So my question here isn’t with the idea — hooray for them! It is with the puzzling calculations of the Mets’ No Kid Hungry program that goes like this: Citigroup, the bank for which the Mets stadium is named, donates $2,000 to fight childhood hunger for every home-field home run that the Mets hit this season.

As of a few days ago, Citi says it had donated $148,000 to No Kid Hungry, which — if my calculator is working correctly — means that Mets sluggers have hit 74 homers at Citi Field in 2016.

And since I have my calculator out anyway, let’s take this one more step. No Kid Hungry also says that the $148,000 has provided 1.48 million meals.

Yep, that’s 10 cents a meal. And not for any old meal. That’s 10 cents apiece for “healthy” meals, according to the charity’s home page.

I’ve gone to a number of Mets games this year. And my puzzlement over the idea of what makes up a healthy 10-cent meal erupted when a colleague and I were sitting in $7 seats, purchased on StubHub, in the last row of Section 500-and-something.

The Mets were playing the Kansas City Royals — a repeat of last year’s World Series — and it seemed as though a lot of home runs were being hit, so the charity promo was repeated often.

Combine that with the fact that the air was a little thinner where we were sitting and maybe that is why I started thinking about that promo.

How could they possibly feed a kid a healthy meal for just 10 cents? And why wasn’t the rest of the world in on their secret?

Imagine how it would change America if the Mets and Citi revealed this secret. Nobody would ever go hungry again. Even a minimum wage would be enough to feed families.

Heck, at that price, let everyone have seconds.

By the time the Mets had won the game and I trekked down from the upper deck, I had concluded that the team’s math must be off. But, no, there it was on the screen: $1 = 10 meals.

Ten cents a friggin’ meal! Wonderful. But how did they do it?

I sent an e-mail to the Mets’ vice president of media relations, Jay Horwitz, asking about the 10-cent meals. Obviously these meals were not served at Citi Field, where you need a second job to afford a beer and sausage hero, but I figured someone must have an answer.

“A great idea for your column,” Horwitz wrote back. “I just can’t help you with some of your questions.”

Actually, there was only one question: What constitutes a 10-cent meal? So I then turned to the good folks from the No Kid Hungry campaign. I asked them for photos of a 10-cent meal and perhaps one of a kid enjoying one.

The program was partially explained on the charity’s Web site: “Our $1 = 10 meal equivalency is a strong representation of our work across the country and is derived from a specific example of our work in Maryland.”

But that still left me with some questions. OK, a lot of questions.

Then it mentions an expansion of its Maryland program over the summer. “As a result [Maryland] saw a dramatic increase in the number of meals served to kids; 212,000 more meals were served over just one summer — meaning the return on investment was more than 10 meals for every $1 invested,” it said.

These are some very industrious people.

I pushed and I pushed. Then I finally had a breakthrough — from No Kid Hungry in the form of an explanation in plain English.

“Every $1 donated to No Kid Hungry helps us provide 10 meals to hungry kids, which is different than buying those meals directly,” the group’s spokeswoman explained.

Aha!

“We work with schools and community groups who offer school breakfast, summer meals and after-school meals. We help them purchase equipment, upgrade their facilities, properly train staff, etc., so they can feed more kids over the long-term,” she explained further.

Okay, so this is about increased efficiency. Good, but not really a 10-cent meal. And certainly not a solution to world hunger.

“Our analysis shows that every dollar invested by No Kid Hungry enables schools and community groups to provide students with 10 more meals,” the spokesman added. “The food itself is bought by schools.”

Was that so hard? OK, now I get it.

Let me add my two cents to their dime by saying this: Let’s go Mets — hit a lot of home runs to pay for more meals! And bon appétit to the kids who are eating those meals.

The Mets, Citi and the charity encompass good people doing good work. And now I will not have to rack my brain wondering how to purchase, even at wholesale, a healthy meal for a dime.