NEW YORK — More than nine months in, the unpredictability of this pandemic-ridden market has become a smidge more predictable, according to speakers at the virtual New York Produce Show and Conference — but nothing like it was.
The show was Dec. 9-11.
“It’s like trying to stick a marshmallow through a coin slot, that’s how this thing was, at times,” said Jay Schneider, director of merchandising of Albertson’s Mid-Atlantic Division, the new name for Acme Markets after its merger this summer with Safeway/Eastern.
Matthew D’Arrigo, CEO of wholesale distributor D’Arrigo New York at Hunts Point Produce Market, Bronx, said he never thought he’d be grateful for some of the terminal market’s old structural characteristics.
“Thank God it’s a big market and that we have open-air docks. Who thought we’d be thankful for that? Even on a good day, you don’t have to get close to people,” D’Arrigo said.
It’s been no secret that the retail produce sector has had big business wins since the pandemic hit the nation in March, including 300% increases in some cases even today, said Vic Savanello, vice president of produce and floral at SpartanNash, Byron Center, Mich., the nation’s fifth largest food distributor with 19,000 employees.
SpartanNash operates more than 155 corporate-owned grocery stores and distributes to 2,100 independent locations nationwide.
“I personally feel like it’s gotten much more predictable ... I’ve found those spikes happen more in the departments where retailers were challenged more than others,” such as cleaning supplies and meat, Savanello said.
D’Arrigo is seeing more appreciation for wholesalers and terminal markets, which have been gradually offering more delivery services to customers for years, along with retailers delivering to consumers.
“The world is being delivered to people now. It’s trucks delivering packages,” he said.
Hunts Point may have the largest wholesale produce market of its kind in the nation that’s an aging New York City institution, but the companies’ third and fourth generations are stepping up and are quite flexible and adaptable to the pandemic’s effects, D’Arrigo said.
“It’s funny. We’re reactionary and unchanging in the way we do business, yet every day we’re changing,” he said.
