New York Produce Show Industry Tours Spotlight Retailers, Produce Markets

During the last day of the New York Produce Show, Dec. 12, participants could select one of five industry tours when registering for the show and conference. All bus tours departed from the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel.

BROOKLYN

In Brooklyn, success in food retailing has a lot to do with location, but it also has to do with size. Location is critical in Brooklyn because a store operates within a distinct set of demographics. Then, the size of the physical store is important, with many retailers challenged to do the most they can in a little space.

Take Foodtown on Grand Street in Brooklyn, for example. Shoppers entering the store immediately encounter rows of crate-style floor displays, flanked by cold cases in a neat organization, with clear sight lines past popular products such as citrus, avocados and a grab-and-go display of bagged apples.

The leading products in the cold case are convenient grab-and-go items, such as clamshell and bagged salads on one side and packaged bulk items on the other, including grapes, kiwi and apples.

Following salads in the one cold case are veggies, a generous selection of tray-wrapped mushrooms and, beyond that, greens. On the floor, potatoes and onions, and tropicals follow apples mixed with a few related groceries items, including snacks such as bagged plantain strips.

The cold case closer to the grocery assortment continued past the bagged items to feature berries and fresh-cut fruit.

Food Bazaar on Van Brunt Street, a local chain famous for its abundant exotic and ethnic produce, adapts to space issues by focusing on neighborhood demographics. This store piles high Latin and tropical produce, alongside typical staples to address the composition of the neighborhood.

Red Hook today is a gentrified neighborhood that in the 1970s and ’80s was considered among the worst neighborhoods in New York. Today, the neighborhood includes immigrant families and lots of young professionals.

In the tried-and-true Food Bazaar way, the Red Hook store appeals to local demographics with a large organic section and a conspicuous presentation of dried fruit and nuts. A big fresh-cut and tray-wrapped veggies display, with an adjacent display of rotisserie chicken, holds appeal for just about anyone.

The store opened in 2006 as a Fairway, a banner known for its Manhattan store, with a particularly big produce department. Fairway grew rapidly in the early 2000s, but the expansion failed, and the banner pretty much disappeared, with the stores taken over by other supermarket operators. The Food Bazaar takeover in 2020 guaranteed an abundance of produce in a somewhat eccentric layout that put fruits and vegetables up front, sort of hiding grocery. Fairway was renowned for reasonable produce prices, and Food Bazaar keeps up that tradition.

Despite being among the smallest stores in the chain, Wegmans on Flushing Avenue combines convenience products prominently, including packaged salads and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, with items that are trending or favorites of the community, value products, plus an impressive display of bananas.

The packaged salad display includes clamshells for customers who will buy them because they fit and keep well in little refrigerators. Clear merchandising divides distinct conventional, organic and greenhouse-grown sections.

Berries and salads are among the store’s best sellers. Like the salad display, the conventional and organic berry products line up side by side.

The Brooklyn Wegmans offers variety that shifts with the seasons. Yet, the store does as much as it can to address the wide variety of tastes and preferences in Brooklyn, so pomegranates and other exotic fruits may change in their proportions and position from season to season.

The tour ended at 3 Guys from Brooklyn, the iconic fruits and vegetables market at the major crossroads of 65th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway. The store continues to operate 24 hours a day, with the bulk of its produce merchandised streetside in an assortment to satisfy the range of surrounding ethnic communities.

3 Guys from Brooklyn uses all the space it has to entice the neighborhood. The piled-high outside presentation that wraps around the corner store, allows for easy, walk-along-the-street shopping. Inside, a wide variety of root vegetables are on tap, along with fresh cuts and packaged salads, and a small organics section, as well as a limited number of grocery items.

Phil Penta, managing partner of 3 Guys from Brooklyn, notes that business isn’t easy, as he faces government regulations, high insurance rates, and a civic climate that has led to more abundant retail crime, among other challenges. However, he says that 3 Guys is proud of feeding its diverse Brooklyn community and providing them with good value, so coping is part of the business.

“Everybody comes for a little bit of everything,” says Penta. “Anything I can get a deal on in Hunts Point that I can put into the paper is obviously good. But it’s not for the faint of heart.”

HUNTS POINT PRODUCE MARKET

The most popular tour was the Hunts Point Produce Market, Bronx, NY. Hunts Point is the New York City area’s hub for fresh produce, with a history going back more than 200 years. The market today spans over 1 million square feet.

Hunts Point is the largest market in the U.S., with 30 firms calling it home.

The lunch at the end of the tour provided time for a Q&A.

MANHATTAN

Produce Director Marc Goldman welcomed the Manhattan retail tour participants to the Morton Williams on Broadway in New York, NY. Goldman spoke on retail pricing, purchasing and inventories.

Morton Williams has 15 retail stores in Manhattan, one in the Bronx, NY, and one in Jersey City, NJ.

The next stop on the tour was Brooklyn Fare’s Hudson Yards store on West 37th St. When entering the store, the produce department was at the main entrance. The selection was nice and large, considering the small retail space.

Wegmans at Astor Place onLafayette Street was the next stop on the tour. The 87,500-square-foot, two-story store opened in 2023. Produce takes up much of the lower level.

The department includes freestanding displays of apples, onions and potatoes, color-coordinated yellow squash and cauliflower displays, a tomato table with nearly two dozen SKUs, and a wall of grab-and-go cut fruit.

The final stop on the tour was at Eataly on Fifth Avenue. The upscale Eataly NYC Flatiron store is over 50,000 square feet and opened in 2010. Eataly is a chain of Italian marketplaces with a variety of restaurants, food counters, bakery, produce, retail items, and a cooking school.

The produce department offers many unique hard-to-find items, such as Brussels sprouts stalks, Buddha’s hand, gooseberry, persimmon, purple cauliflower, pepino melon, breakfast radish and fennel bulb.

The company says seasonal fruits and vegetables are sourced from regional farmers.

NEW JERSEY

The New Jersey retail tour included three supermarkets and a tour of the EXP Group warehouse.

First stop was Food Bazaar on John F. Kennedy Boulevard, in North Bergen, NJ. Food Bazaar operates throughout the New York metropolitan area, and a company source notes the operation includes five supermarkets in New Jersey that focus on serving both mainstream shoppers and ethnic consumers who look for particular products.

At the North Bergen Food Bazaar, the emphasis on the ethnic side was toward Latinos. Although Food Bazaar stores typically include many Latin specialties, the assortment does shift depending on the local community.

The second stop was A&J Seabra Supermarket, on Ferry Street, in Newark, NJ. The Ironbound section of Newark is famous for its tightly knit Portuguese community, although its population has been changing with Brazilian immigrants and, increasingly, new arrivals from South America and the Caribbean.

Seabra’s Group, headquartered in Newark, operates stores in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Florida. The Ferry Street store, opened in 2019, has its produce section in front of the store near the entrance.

The Shoprite on Springfield Avenue in Newark, offers a significant assortment of Latino specialties.

ShopRite mixes bulk and bagged produce throughout the Newark store sales floor, and nuts enjoy strong demand.

In terms of layout, the produce department at the Newark store is open, airy and bright, and it incorporates a mix of display vehicles including bins, tables and racks on the floor. The presentation of bagged and clamshell salads and greens is broad in the vertical cold case.

The last stop was a tour of the EXP Group warehouse in North Bergen, NJ. EXP Group has 35 ripening rooms in North Bergen, which give the capability to ripen 35,000 bananas per cycle.

PHILADELPHIA 

The Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market on Essington Avenue is the newest terminal market in the U.S., opening its doors in June 2011. However, its roots trace back to the market’s original Dock Street location during the colonial era.

Today, 19 produce wholesalers operate in one to nine bays in this 700,000-square foot, quarter-mile long, largest fully enclosed, fully refrigerated wholesale produce terminal worldwide.

Tour participants received a guided tour of the facility, with ample time to ask wholesalers questions.

“We handle over 300 items,” says John Dohanicz, buying and sales at Ryeco LLC.

“Rojo Brillante Persimmons from Spain are one of the newest items in,” adds Dan Vena, director of sales for John Vena Produce.

The tour also visited Philadelphia’s famous enclosed farmers market, the Reading Terminal Market, in Center City. Over 100 merchants, including lovine Brothers Produce Market, sell their food wares here.

SAVE THE DATE!

Mark your calendar for next year’s New York Produce Show and Conference: Dec. 2-4, 2025.

And exhibitors, book your booth now, as there’s limited time to maintain the current booth rate. Visit www.nyproduceshow.com/exhibit2025 or talk to your sales representative before Jan. 12, 2025, to lock in the 2024 rate!