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Alamo Abundance

The San Antonio region’s suppliers and retailers respond to surging demand in Texas and beyond
MS_Alamo Abundance

Until fairly recently, the Alamo City was considered a charming if somewhat sleepy city. But this has changed—San Antonio is now the second largest city in Texas, edging out Dallas to come in behind Houston. Better yet, it has become a favored conduit for produce shipments to the Midwest and East Coast.

A Historical Backdrop
San Antonio is home to the legendary San Antonio de Valero Mission, better known as the Alamo, and the 15-mile River Walk along the San Antonio River, one of the city’s biggest attractions, bringing in more than 5 million visitors a year.

San Antonio as a whole has become a major tourist destination, hosting nearly 25 million visitors every year, and the city has become known for its restaurants, inventive chefs, and top-notch cuisine.

Supplying the city’s many restaurants, large and small, are growers throughout the Lone Star State. Many are located far south of the city in the Rio Grande Valley and ship every day to the city’s new wholesale produce market, or direct to eateries and grocery stores. And of course, there are truckload upon truckload of fruit and vegetable imports from Mexico via the Pharr-McAllen region arriving on a daily basis.

The Wholesale Market Scene
San Antonio occupies an ideal position between the Texas-Mexico border for delivery to customers in the Midwest and East Coast. No doubt this was the thinking at Abasto Corporation when it developed a new wholesale produce market on the city’s southeast side.

Situated on an 80-acre tract of prime real estate, the San Antonio Wholesale Produce Market was inaugurated in 2016.

The warehouse park boasts 60 refrigerated warehouses with 3,100 square feet of storage space each; state-of-the-art technology; extra wide, paved streets for easy truck access and maneuverability; and 24-hour security and video surveillance. Among the plans on tap for this year are persuading several larger suppliers that San Antonio is the ideal spot for distributing, processing, and repacking products grown in Mexico, within Texas, or southwestern parts of the United States.

Abasto Corporation is betting big that companies will agree; as part of its ambitious second phase, the developer has already begun preselling lots on the remaining acreage. Of particular note are customers interested in building warehouses of 10,000 square feet or more.

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