East Coast foodservice demand picking up — in these ways

Richard “RJ” Durante chatted on his cell phone while riding in the cab of the Nardella Inc. produce truck from the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market to deliver apples and lemons for pies and beefsteak tomatoes for sandwiches to Pie Lady Café in Moorestown, N.J.

Durante and several East Coast wholesalers say foodservice demand is picking up — bit by bit, not in the same way, or some even say to near pre-COVID-19 levels.

“We’ve had some new customers who have flourished,” said Durante, salesman and food safety director. “For me, my bright spot has been bakeries located in New Jersey that have been doing phenomenal. Our deliveries are getting bigger every week. I’m glad to see someone is doing well out of this.”

Chefs from local restaurants are returning to inspect the produce at the market as their surviving restaurants reopen to full capacity in Philadelphia and surrounding areas, he said.

Durante knows some foodservice distributors dealing with pizza places and five-star restaurants who were ordering at 50% capacity and are now filling full orders — especially the pizza places.

“It started out as dribs and drabs. The biggest concern for customers is pricing,” Durante said. “They’ve been working to the bone trying to get through this, and they’re short on staff too, like the market, where every store along the line is hiring.”

Banana sales at M. Levin and Co. Inc. at the Philadelphia wholesale market took a major hit when schools, restaurants, sports and concert venues closed during the pandemic, but presale orders for foodservice bananas are coming in again as schools reopen for in-person learning, said Tracie Levin, controller.

M. Levin and Co.’s partners in the restaurant business are also returning now.

“It has been a really terrible couple of years for the restaurant industry, which has been very hard hit by COVID,” Levin said. “We expect our foodservice partners to start slow with their ordering, and as more and more people get vaccinated and begin venturing back out into the world, we anticipate them gradually increasing their orders — hopefully back to levels where they were pre-March 2020.” 

Wholesalers who used to depend on foodservice customers for a large chunk of their business are also seeing improvements to different degrees at Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx, N.Y.

“We are hoping for a busier late half of the year,” said Phillip Grant, general manager of the Hunts Point market.

In New York City, restaurant revenue losses were $10.3 billion, or -59% from March to November 2020, according to state tax data.

According to a June 10 update from the Independent Restaurant Coalition, 1.46 million restaurant and bar workers nationwide are still jobless, supplier costs are rising and 90,000 small businesses have closed since the start of the pandemic.

Comprised of chefs and smaller restaurateurs, the coalition is credited for its pivotal role in creating the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a $28.6 billion grant program — part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — for small restaurants, bars and restaurant groups trying to prevent more permanent closings, according to The New York Times.

The National Restaurant Association reported that the fallout of 2020 has permanently shuttered more than 110,000 restaurants and bars in the past year.

Stefanie Katzman, executive vice president of S. Katzman Produce in Hunts Point, said she’s happy to see a return of restaurant and hospitality customers, but with a caveat:

“It’s important to note, however, that these businesses aren’t coming back to the world as it was pre-pandemic, and many will face new and increased challenges,” Katzman said.

“These businesses are already coming back wanting to make up for lost business over the past year and a half, but now also have to account for hiring and training new staff amid a labor shortage, paying increased costs for equipment due to raw material shortages, and paying increased freight charges up to two or three times higher than the price of the item itself.”

Katzman is seeing people spending more at restaurants and bars, “which is phenomenal,” since summer started and vaccination rates have increased.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said June 15 that 70% of adults in New York state are now fully vaccinated, a benchmark that eliminates state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions in commercial and social settings.

“But foodservice businesses have to figure out how to account for these increased costs and challenges while not pricing out their customers that they’ve been so eager to welcome back,” she said.

At D’Arrigo New York in Hunts Point, about 20% of business comes from foodservice customers, and Gabriela D’Arrigo said, surprisingly, it’s actually picking back up to pre-COVID levels.

The smaller foodservice wholesalers, called “jobbers,” who create their own local route of mom-and-pop eateries and establishments have reappeared to order a few of each item, rather than whole pallets.

“They’ve come back into the fold, which is awesome to see. This city is healing, like the hashtag on Instagram says,” said D’Arrigo, vice president of marketing and communications.

“There’s a little more of a buzz. We’re definitely seeing an uptick, which we didn’t expect. We didn’t want to get our hopes up. We want to be realistic about what business has been because across the board, it hasn’t been great. We expected recovery to be much slower.”

There’s typically a jump in business at the start of summer, with people out and about more and local melons and tree fruit in season.

“We’re hoping this jolt of energy continues through the fall, but we’re also bracing ourselves for potential drop in business if that does happen,” she said. “We’re excited, but we’re also holding our breath.”