The Changing Produce Market: Even the Onions Are Different

Gate 1, off Alameda Street, is the reception area for all visitors to the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market--the largest produce market in the nation, if not the world.

“Only yesterday we toured some people from Zaire,” says Dick Mount, longtime spokesman for the market’s trade association, the Associated Produce Dealers and Brokers of Los Angeles. “Lately we’re getting a lot of people from Third World and Eastern European countries wanting to see our operation.”

What they see is a wholesale market complete with an infrastructure of growers, brokers, transportation vehicles and a distribution system operating like a Swiss watch. And Mount has watched it grow from an antiquated farmer’s depot to a streamlined, scientifically operated, half-million square feet of warehouse space. Eighty-eight bays house 24 produce companies that handle 500 varieties of food from 30 states and more than 30 foreign countries (although California leads in the total volume sold through the markets). Mount named Central America, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, Mexico, Oregon and South America among the places high on the list of sources of supply. About 92% of the products are local and arrive by truck; the remainder arrive by sea (6%) or air (2%).

“This market used to be a potatoes-and-onions place--the most exotic vegetable was rhubarb,” Mount says. Today, even the onions are different.

“The company that produces these,” says Mount as he passes an area of “sweet onions” from Texas, “is spending $200,000 on promotion. And it’s working. A study showed that consumers are looking for a sweet taste in onions, but they don’t know how to tell storage onions from fresh sweet onions. This company tells the consumer they’re buying sweet onions.”

California growers have picked up on the strategy too. The Imperial Sweet Onions Commission has renamed its product “Sweet Imperials.”

But some changes have been more substantial. Brokers who once relied on word-of-mouth selling methods are becoming sophisticated merchandisers. And, says Mount, the produce itself has changed. “Ethnic demands have changed the produce in the market. It’s become international in scope.”

Demographic studies show that some time in the 1990s, Latinos in Los Angeles will exceed 50% of the population, rising to 6.7 million, and the Asian population may be the fastest-growing group in the area. “That means that consumers will be learning how to incorporate these ethnic products in their own cooking,” Mount says.

Mangoes, one of the most widely consumed fruits in the world (growing in Asia, Africa and Latin America), are now a major seller in the market. Produce wholesalers often handle rice and red beans these days--dried products which were not traditionally considered produce. And plantains, red bananas and cactus, once regarded as Latino specialty items, are now accepted by mainstream consumers. “Would you believe that one distributor sells 1,000 cactus leaves a week?” Mount says. “You couldn’t give them away a few years ago.”

Today, specialty items such as radicchio, arugula, a variety of mixed exotic lettuces and baby vegetables are in the mainstream and are expected to be in demand throughout the 1990s and beyond.

“See this?” Mount says, slapping a box filled with golden Asian pears from New Zealand. “Only five years ago you’d have wondered what these strange-looking fruit were. Today you can’t keep enough of them in the market.”