Creation Gardens, Inc.

Creation Gardens, Inc., doing business as What Chefs Want, supplies fresh produce—fruits, vegetables, and shell eggs meeting USDA Grade No. 1 or better quality standards—to the Department of Defense and other federal agencies as a prime contractor under delivery orders placed against indefinite delivery contracts, with no federal set-asides applied across its footprint.

Creation Gardens is a for-profit Subchapter S corporation headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, with a subsidiary, Freshpack Produce, Inc. The vendor operates in primary NAICS 424480 (Fresh Fruits and Vegetable Merchant Wholesalers) and PSC 24 (Fruits and Vegetables), reflecting a narrow, commodity-focused business line rooted in perishable food distribution. The company competes full-and-open without set-aside protection.

Customer concentration is extreme and monolithic. The Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support Subsistence division accounts for 191,404 of 191,415 total awards (99.99% of award count) and $224.1 million of $269 million combined potential value (83% of dollars), making Creation Gardens functionally a single-customer vendor. The Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service holds eight awards worth $44.8 million for feasibility studies and related grant work; the Department of Justice Bureau of Prisons holds two awards worth $42,000. The vendor's entire operation rests on its $4.9 million single-award Indefinite Delivery Contract with DLA Troop Support Subsistence running from May 2025 through April 2030, which supplies fresh produce, vegetables, and shell eggs to Department of Defense and non-Department of Defense schools in Pennsylvania. Creation Gardens has placed 191,404 delivery orders under this parent IDC, with the five largest parent vehicles collectively accounting for 165,726 task orders ($90.9 million combined potential value) and demonstrating the sheer volume of transactional activity: IDC SPE30023DSA17 carries 48,587 task orders worth $27.7 million; SPE30025DSA57 carries 37,926 task orders worth $22.9 million; SPE30019DS344 carries 28,111 task orders worth $13.4 million; SPE30023DS407 carries 28,038 task orders worth $16.9 million; and SPE30019DSA44 carries 23,064 task orders worth $10.1 million.

Award activity has grown exponentially since entry into this contract vehicle. The vendor recorded five awards in 2022, 7,770 in 2023, 33,254 in 2024, 63,980 in 2025, and 32,047 through mid-April 2026. The explosive growth reflects the transactional nature of delivery-order-based produce supply: the company issues hundreds of small orders per week for perishable items, each typically valued between $35 and $11,202. Recent representative orders include $11,202.50 for fresh oranges (April 2026), $9,910.32 for fresh blackberries (April 2026), $5,586.30 for fresh bananas (April 2026), and $2,463.29 for fresh lettuce (April 2026), all placed under the DLA IDC. Combined dollars obligated total $161.2 million against a $269 million combined potential ceiling—a 60% obligation rate typical of active subsistence supply contracts.

Creation Gardens' grant footprint is minimal. The vendor received a single project grant from the Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service (award date September 2022, completion date March 2024) to conduct a feasibility study on establishing a "farm to corporate" market category using third-party produce management companies to facilitate regional food sourcing for multi-unit restaurants and food-service operations. The grant funded collaborative work with Food Works Group to assess supply and demand for regional food products and develop a roadmap for scaling regional food-producer engagement with large corporate buyers.

The vendor holds no positions on government-wide acquisition contracts, multiple-award schedules, or other blanket vehicles. Its entire federal footprint is rooted in the single-award DLA Troop Support Subsistence IDC. This concentration creates both stability—the contract runs through April 2030 with no disclosed recompete exposure in the next twenty-four months—and vulnerability, as contract termination or non-renewal would eliminate 100% of the vendor's federal revenue. Subcontract exposure is zero; Creation Gardens operates solely as a prime.