What you should know
- Hunts Point wholesalers distribute £2.5bn of produce a year, moving around £30m on Tuesday alone.
- Thanksgiving is an especially busy time of year because the quintessential American holiday is widely celebrated across the United States.
- Not only can the place be likened to a stock exchange, it’s also a kind of Grand Central station with delivery trucks rolling in and out of the Bronx facility.
NEW YORK – It was early in the morning and the docks of New York’s largest farmer’s market were swarming with cold. Thanksgiving was slowly approaching and sacks of onions, potatoes and carrots were flying off the shelves.
Amidst the buzz, buyers and sellers were closing deals on tomatoes, mangoes and lettuce. Trucks were ready to take away the bounty: a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables destined for supermarket aisles, home refrigerators, and eventually millions of mouths across the Northeast during the gluttonous holidays.
“This time of year is the busiest. We have Thanksgiving, we have Christmas and New Years. These are all very large family feasts and big meals,” said Stefanie Katzman, executive vice president of S. Katzman Produce, one of the oldest and largest farm produce distributors in the country, which operates out of Hunts Point Produce Market.
The market is a sprawling collection of wholesalers making it the busiest fruit and vegetable distribution center in the country, accounting for more than 60 percent of New York City’s daily stock and feeding more than 30 million consumers, according to another Hunts wholesaler. point. , and Armata Inc.
Thanksgiving is an especially busy time of year because the quintessential American holiday is widely celebrated across the United States.
“Our marketplace as a whole does about three times as much business as normal on a day like today,” Katzman said as he led a Tuesday morning tour of his company’s cavernous warehouse, a quarter-mile (0.4 kilometers) long and it has space for agricultural products along almost two football fields.
In a huge room, the smell of onions filled the cold air. In another, the scent of berries wafted through the room, even as Katzman’s best-seller, strawberries, was in short supply due to inclement weather that wreaked havoc on the growing season.
“Our market is truly unique. It’s like the stock market, but a little more intense. Because our ‘stock’ is perishable, we can’t keep it for long in the hopes that it will increase in value,” Katzman said.
Not only can the place be likened to a stock exchange, it’s also a kind of Grand Central station with delivery trucks rolling in and out of the Bronx facility.
In total, Hunts Point’s wholesalers distribute 2.5 billion pounds of produce annually, with about 30 million pounds handled on Tuesday alone. The product ends up in places like Whole Foods, high-end grocery stores and specialty markets, as well as small, family-owned outlets.
Michael Rubinsky, a shopper at Market Basket, a gourmet grocery store, makes the hour-long drive from Franklin Lakes, New Jersey three times a week to inspect produce.
“I come for the basics, everything like celery, lettuce, strawberries and potatoes, but quality comes first,” she said. “I check the quality and load everything on the truck”.
Charlie Mule, one of Katzman’s product suppliers, said consumers don’t realize where their products come from.
“You ate our stuff without even knowing you ate our stuff,” Mule said. “If you go to a restaurant or store, you probably don’t realize how it got there before you put it in your fridge or on your plate.”
