Location-wise, the terminal markets offer easy access to Boston customers, with their produce variety providing convenient one-stop shopping for discerning buyers.
“You have 50 to 60 tables here (at the New England Produce Center) that handle the best labels in the country, and the most knowledgeable people in the produce industry. People that shop this market are very fussy,” says Anthony Sharrino, president of Eaton & Eustis Company.
The location of the terminal markets is also optimal with easy access to major highways, enabling delivery all the way from Connecticut and up to the Canadian border, and from the Canadian Maritime Provinces to Albany, New York. The markets also enjoy close proximity to Boston Harbor, where container ships come into port.
When it comes to the retail environment, the only constant is change. From high-end specialty stores to big box retailers to independents, Boston has it all. But intense competition and changing distribution patterns have certainly had an impact.
According to Peter John Condakes, president of Peter Condakes Company, Inc., a tenant at both the NEPC and Boston Market Terminal (BMT), although the markets are holding their own, he says there are fewer independent retailers than there were 20 or 30 years ago, with many acquired by national chains or out of business.
“The big guys, the superstores, have gobbled up quite a bit of the business for themselves,” Condakes says, and worse yet, “because they source direct, the market has lost that volume.”
The situation is exacerbated by consolidation within the industry, with larger enterprises leveraging buying power to deal direct with growers or suppliers instead of coming into the wholesale markets.
Thirty years ago, Condakes recalls, the big retailers would have 30 trailers in the markets filling up with product. Now, he laments, they only have two or three and are merely shoring up supply for short items, instead of using the trucks to fill up their warehouses.
On the opposite side of the coin, the impact of online retailing (and its associated marketing challenges) and growing popularity of food trucks have had less impact on market vendors and more at the retail level.
Steven Piazza, president, Community-Suffolk Inc. at the BMT, says in this case, there can be a bit of a positive spillover if retailers do not have a warehouse or enough space to store supply, and then buyers may visit wholesalers to fill in the gaps.
This is an excerpt from the most recent Produce Blueprints quarterly journal. Click here to read the full article.
