instore - May 2016 - COM2

Insight Insider

The biggest reason? Quality, to be concise. Everything that comes into FreshPro's 80,000-sq-ft produce location
is inspected and checked against the
company's distinct specifications. An
apple, for example, will be tested for
pressure, ensuring a certain, desirable
level of crispness is present.
"If it's a red apple, it has to be 99 percent full red and it has to be perfectly
shaped so that it stands," Avillo says.
"We know what we want, we do business the right way, and if it doesn't
meet our specs we have to reject it."
Being a produce distributor makes offering high-quality, fresh-cut fruit that
much easier. The fruit that is processed
and sent to retailers is the same eating
quality that is sent to whole fruit customers. The same standards for sugar level,
pressure and taste are maintained for
freshly cut produce as well.
"Our big advantage is that we maintain
our high standards," Avillo says. "You can
buy good looking melons to process, and
they'll process well and look good in the
cup, but there's no sugar in them. They
taste like a potato. That's not what we
want to do."
Another growing trend is providing
quality local and organic produce. Organic makes up 25 percent of FreshPro's produce business, a number Avillo says is growing every year. "We're big
on local and organic," he says. "They're
not just buzzwords to us."
The problem is this: what exactly constitutes local, especially when you're so
close to state lines? Farms in New York
State might be closer to FreshPro than
the farms of South Jersey. FreshPro's solution? "We're buying product that is native
to the area," Avillo says.

New name, new approach
In light of these changes it was decided
that a new name was in order to better represent to prospective customers
just what the company did and how
much it emphasized quality. RLB Food
Distributors represented an older company and the names of people no longer involved in the business.

2 * MAY 2016

commissary INSIDER

PHOTO: FRESH PRO

A two-year process ended with the company formally adopting FreshPro as its
new name in late 2015. "The feedback we
have gotten so far is it's a great name and
it tells the industry and consumers what
we do," Avillo says.
So RLB Food Distributors became FreshPro, the website was completely revamped, and new lanes of marketing
were explored. Avillo says the company
is advertising more, but now using multiple modes of marketing has become
important.
"It's not like marketing to consumers,"
Avillo says. "When you're in this part of
the country, around NYC, there's a tendency for produce managers to think

things grow in the local terminal markets. They get a price sheet from six
suppliers, and that's how they do business every day."
That stresses the importance of being
able to meet face-to-face with prospective customers, which presents the opportunity to fully detail what the company offers and how it offers it. "We've
got to find a way to tell everybody who
we are. Some companies, the department manager in the store makes the
decision. Other companies, the sales
manager in the office makes the decision. Sometimes it's the field supervisor," Avillo says. "There's no one way
to do it, especially since we're not just
shooting prices."

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