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Link to the Times Web Site Version June 18, 2000 From Ecuador to
Bodega: By DAN
ACKMAN This is a story about
a Bronx banana and how it got there.
The banana was grown in Ecuador, purchased ultimately in Manhattan,
and arrived in the United States on a boat docked in Staten Island. It did all that largely at the
behest of Teddy Georgallas, part owner of Banana Distributors of New York,
which operates out of a warehouse on Drake Street in the Hunts Point
section of the Bronx. At the Korean market
on Broadway and 87th Street, the banana sells for 59 cents per pound,
roughly 25 cents for a banana, which is amazing when you think about all
it takes to get it here.
Teddy Georgallas is one of the few men who does-- not just this
banana, but 100 million others like it. The bananas Georgallas
trades are grown on plantations in Ecuador by independent farmers who sell
their crop to Pacific Fruit, an Ecuadorian company owned by the Naboa
family. Pacific Fruit ships
them to the U.S. under the brand name Bonita. _________ Georgallas sells about
1.9 million bananas every week and just under 100 million bananas per
year. Which is a lot of
bananas. _________ Banana Distributors
takes delivery at the dock in Staten Island. Off the boat the bananas are "full
green" and the key to the wholesale banana trade is the ripening. At its Hunts Point facility,
American Banana maintains 22 pressurized and refrigerated ripening rooms,
where the bananas are kept at a temperature of 58 degrees prior to
sale. A bulk retailer such
as Costco, for example, might prefer to by its bananas "50/50 green and
yellow" so it can sell them in five-pound bags. A bodega owner who buys bananas
three times a week may prefer his banana "full yellow" or "yellow with
green tips." When a customer
calls in his order, Georgalla translates it into "one box from room three
and two from room 12." The
entire ripening process takes from five to eight
days. Banana Distributors
main warehouse is just outside the New York City Terminal Market
itself. Being outside the
market allows Georgallas to charge a bit more than dealers inside the
market because he saves his customers the trouble of parking and
traversing the market's chaotic loading docks. Currently a box of bananas sells
for about $10. Being on the outside
also allows customers, even those with other business inside, to buy their
bananas at the end of their run.
That way the perishable fruit spends less time sitting on a
delivery truck. "People want
to put their bananas on last," Georgallas says. Over the years, big
supermarket chains have invested in their own ripening rooms, so American
Banana now sells mostly to independent supermarkets and smaller
stores. The chains still call
on American Banana and other Hunts Point dealers for "fill-ins." In addition to
bananas, Georgallas sells a full line of "tropicals" and other
produce. Most of the other
produce-- as many as 200 items at a time-- is sold from American Banana's
"unit" on Row D of the market itself. Banana Distributors
buys its bananas by the palate (a palate contains 48 boxes) and loads them
onto trucks that hold 20 palates each. The company sells
approximately 20 truckloads (consisting of 20 palates or 960 boxes) per
week. With roughly 100
bananas in a 40-pound box, that works out to about 1.9 million bananas
every week and just under 100 million bananas per year. Which is a lot of bananas.
Georgallas says he
grosses $500,000 per week, roughly on par with his competitors American
Banana, Top Banana, and Long Island Banana, among
others._ Wholesale produce is
an all-night business. Banana
Distributors is open from midnight to two in the afternoon. Today, Georgallas starts work at 6
a.m.. But there were times he
had to start work so early that he woke up
yesterday. Georgallas, 41, is a
banana man his whole life.
Like most of the distributors in Hunts Point, Banana Distributors
is a family business. His
father and uncle started the company 50 years ago in East Harlem. The company moved to Hunts Point
ten years later, well before the market opened there in 1967, and to its
present location in 1979.
Georgallas worked
summers at the warehouse. He
had hoped to become a schoolteacher, but "economics" called him back to
the banana trade and he became a partner with his cousin and
brother-in-law 18 years ago. Georgallas' daughter
is too young to think about her career. But his brother-in-law Paul
Rosenblatt has a son who is a senior in college. Rosenblatt hopes that his son will
find another line of work.
"Not that it's too hard, I'd just assume he do something else. I told him, 'Don't even think
about it, until he has five years." Most family
businesses, he says, tend to slip in the third generation, and the banana
business is no different.
Still, wholesale produce is not for "upstarts." Outsiders, even those who buy an
existing company, tend to fail.
It's a business of relationships and customers are reluctant to
change suppliers. Some have
tried to break in "by giving the product away. But it's hard to make money that
way." If Rosenblatt's son
doesn't take over, who will?
In other cities, Rosenblatt says, growers like Bonita or Chiquita
Banana have bought out the distributors. If that happens here, bananas may
still flow into the Bronx, but it won't be Bronx men selling
them. |
