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The produce business seems to be gradually rebounding in Los Angeles as stores and restaurants start to reopen after more than two months of shutdowns triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s been a really tricky couple of months,” said Mark Munger, vice president of sales and marketing for Los Angeles-based 4Earth Farms.
Foodservice sales plummeted to 5% of normal during the first weeks of the shutdown that began in March, he said.
Some retail business expanded rapidly at first, then slowed.
“Normally, we have pretty good diagnostics and predictability on our customers,” he said. “It all went out the window. It turned into a real chaotic period.”
Overall, sales have been good at 4Earth Farms, which conducts mostly supermarket business, Munger said.
“Foodservice is slowly and methodically coming back,” he said, but it’s still only 50% to 60% of normal.
Standard produce commodities — like lettuces, apples and potatoes — probably are faring best, he said.
The company has implemented an aggressive plan to keep employees safe.
“We made a ton of tactical changes,” Munger said, including hiring a professional to take temperatures of everyone entering the facility, sanitizing surfaces three times a day or more, installing Plexiglas dividers, adding handwashing stations and conducting weekly training for employees.
At JBJ Distributing Inc./Veg-Land Inc., Fullerton, Calif., business has ranged from “very steady” to “maybe slightly increased” during the pandemic, said general manager Dominic Etcheberria.
About 95% of the company’s products are organically grown, which seems to appeal to consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic, Etcheberria said.
“People are looking for the safest product possible,” he said. “They immediately think organic.”
Requests for packaged produce from retailers have picked up, Etcheberria said.
The company already offered 1-pound carry-and-go bagged units of Brussels sprouts and mini sweet peppers.
“We extended that into other items as well,” Etcheberria said.
Now JBJ also offers two-count overwrapped packages of other vegetables, like cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini and bell peppers.
Etcheberria said he expects the program to expand to more items and to continue after the current crisis is over.
Sustainability is a priority at Los Angeles-based Progressive Produce LLC, said Oscar Guzman, director of marketing and sales.
“The area we have really been focusing on is sustainability and social responsibility, in regards to our people, practices and packaging,” Guzman said.
Already, 90% of the company’s packaging is recyclable, and there’s more to come.
“This fall, we are excited to launch new packaging that will be the next frontier of biodegradability and true sustainability,” he said.
Progressive Produce also has a new cold storage facility running at full steam in nearby La Mirada, Calif., helping make the company more efficient “and looking to become more scalable, sustainable, and ultimately a great company with a great future,” he said.
On the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, business is perhaps 15% better than it was just six weeks ago, estimated Rocky Ramirez, sales manager for Olympic Fruit & Vegetable Distributors.
“Whatever ground we lost, we’re making up slowly but surely, if we haven’t already caught up,” he said.
But Ramirez said he still worries about a second wave of the pandemic.
“COVID-19 is still very much among us,” he said.
Things also were looking up across the street on the Seventh Street Market, said Carlos Franco, manager at Elias Produce.
Some restaurants that were just beginning to come back after coronavirus closures had to delay their reopening because of vandalism during the recent civil unrest, he said.
But things were improving in mid-June.
“Business looks like its picking up a little bit,” he said.
“I got an order for 200 (trays of) strawberries from one company and 300 (trays of) blueberries this morning,” he said one recent morning. “They’re coming back.”
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