Produce Vegetables and Fruits

Since 1977 it was my job to find the best fruits and vegetables wherever they were grown and bring them to the marketplace for the country’s largest retail chain stores, food service companies and wholesalers. Many times we traveled our country looking at fields of produce and meeting some of the hardest workers around, farmers.

As I watched and listened to what they had to do to make a living I had much admiration for their hard working lifestyle. I also wondered if it would be possible to create a direct form of communication between the farmer and the end user so you could benefit more from the true fruits of their labor.

As a matter of information I was never a real vegetable eater when I was a kid unless it was covered in cheese (I never found the farmer that could do that). Growing up in Midwest Ohio I was fortunate to have a large choice of local produce and farm stands within a few miles of where I lived. After graduating college and starting law school I quickly understood I needed something much faster paced than the law profession. I found my path into selling commodities, and my particularly special niche commodity of produce. I traded in law books for heads of lettuce and writing legal briefs to sourcing apples and potatoes.

I cut my produce teeth so to speak at the largest produce brokerage company in the country and ran their Cleveland, Ohio branch until 1995. After that experience I thought I could form my own brokerage companies applying my personal philosophies of business. I was successful in doing it three times, each time selling the companies to either the employees or partners.

Now it is the goal of our new company, Find Local Produce, LLC. and this web-site to provide you the same information and resources that I have acquired over a lifetime of sourcing the best produce in the country, with a specific focus on local produce in your area.

Other parts of this website will allow you an inside look at what is happening in the produce industry and how it comes to affect your life. We will talk about new laws, food safety, places we visited, nutrition benefits of the produce you eat and some of the establishments we have visited to sample some of the best prepared local produce. Please free to contact us at any time with questions about produce or places you want to share with us to offer to your neighbors.

A portion of all proceeds from Find Local Produce, LLC goes to support Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Coastal Empire.