GrubMarket says it has acquired Miami-based A&B Tropical Produce.
The Florida company is 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, according to a news release. A&B currently sells over 50 commodities to nearly 100 foodservice and wholesale customers across the U.S. and Canada, the release said.
Terms of the deal were not released.
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, the release said.
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 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.
"Alan and Bobby have built A&B into an impressive fresh tropical produce business that has an immensely loyal customer base,” GrubMarket CEO Mike Xu said in the release. “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," Xu continued. "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."
After the acquisition, A&B will continue to be managed by its current accomplished and mission-driven leadership team, the release said.
"I started my fresh produce career in 1987, working warehouse jobs and learning the produce business from scratch,” A&B Tropical Produce owner Alan Goldberg said in the release. “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," Goldberg continued. "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.”
As a part of GrubMarket's portfolio, A&B will use GrubMarket's 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 e-commerce solution, the release said.