GrubMarket, announced that it has completed the acquisition of Miami, Florida-based A&B Tropical Produce, a well-respected fresh produce business best known for sourcing tropical and exotic fruits and vegetables such as plantains, yellow yams, yuca, avocados and dragon fruit from producers domestically and from 11 countries across Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. A&B currently sells over 50 commodities to nearly 100 foodservice and wholesale customers across the U.S. and Canada.
Founded over 14 years ago, A&B is still run by its original owners Alan Goldberg and Bobby Wani, both of whom are fresh produce veterans with over three decades of industry experience. Today, A&B is a full-service food distribution and wholesale business with a Primus-certified warehouse covering over 20,000 square feet in space that includes state-of-the-art repacking rooms. With a strategic location near the major ports in South Florida, A&B’s facility also houses cold storage space, supporting a successful business offering “in and out” shipping services. After the acquisition, A&B will continue to be managed by its current accomplished and mission-driven leadership team.
“I started my fresh produce career in 1987, working warehouse jobs and learning the produce business from scratch. I am proud of what we have built at A&B and everything we accomplished over the past 14 years as a cornerstone of Florida’s fresh food supply chain. Not only have many of our customers been doing business with us since the beginning, but also most of our key personnel have also been working for us since the start.
I’m excited that GrubMarket shares our vision of fostering a positive culture and focusing on outstanding service to provide the highest quality and freshest food to everyone. I’ve been following GrubMarket’s tremendous growth trajectory over the years, and I look forward to embracing their proven technology ecosystem and considerable network to provide more premium tropical fruits and vegetables to GrubMarket’s customers nationwide,” said Alan Goldberg, owner of A&B Tropical Produce.
Mike Xu, CEO of GrubMarket, adds: “Alan and Bobby have built A&B into an impressive fresh tropical produce business that has an immensely loyal customer base. They organically learned how the fresh produce industry works by starting from scratch and working at the warehouse level, which gave them a deep appreciation for operational and business fundamentals and a passion for building a successful food company. I am also impressed by the global scale of A&B, which supplies tropical goods from many key international countries like Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, and Colombia. A&B is also strategically located near key Florida ports at the crossroads of North and South America, which will enable GrubMarket to strengthen our position not only on the East Coast but also in the global food supply chain. We are thrilled to welcome the A&B team to the GrubMarket family.”
As a part of GrubMarket’s portfolio, A&B will utilize GrubMarket’s innovative and proprietary WholesaleWare software suite, the company’s software-as-a-service platform that provides food industry wholesalers and distributors with seamless financial management, powerful sales and online ordering features, precise inventory management, lot traceability, grower accounting, and automated routing and logistics, as well as Orders IO, GrubMarket’s custom branded mobile eCommerce solution.
SOURCE : PRNewswire