A stupid system was replaced by a slightly more effective one... and it was 'markets and economists' that did it! Pure propaganda.
Heres a more efficient system. How much does the food box they give out cost? Say $50? Just give the customers $50 and let them spend it. No more admin
If everyone spent money like a rational, 100 IQ individual with a moderate amount of schooling on basic financial strategies, it'd be a lot easier to manage a population. Unfortunately, less than half of the population is 100 IQ, and in some areas less than 5% of the population understands a single high school course worth of financial management.
And then of course you have fundamentally irrational actors as well, like drug addicts. IQ and education don't help there, addictions are monsters that swallow people of all socio-economic varieties.
So you have to either let those people squalor, or find another solution.
Then you can manage the special cases with specialists.
Which can be traded for money.
Believe me, I understand first hand how difficult a heavily addicted person can be. Recovery is a huge process that takes more than just giving someone a safe place to live and food.
I'm sure we can all think of edge cases. I'm sure there are people who will trade the food for drugs some how. They probably need addiction and mental health help, rather than someone who 'knows what is good for them'
It's a food bank network that uses the monetary donations it receives to support the logistics of moving hundreds of millions of pounds of food to food banks. The value of that food exceeds their monetary donations.