Bruce McPherson, owner of West Seattle Produce hopes to see more people take advantage of his aggressive pricing and help his company through the slowdown caused by crop damage and the natural slowdown the produce business has in the winter.
In the "worst year for produce" in many years it might be even worse for one local produce vendor. West Seattle Produce, open for less than a year is struggling with high produce prices and the natural slowdown in the produce business in winter.
Bruce McPherson owner said, " I spoke to Frank of Frank's Produce who has been in business 55 years, he's the most successful person in the industry. He said this has been the worst year for produce in his entire career. First of all they had the floods, then they had the freeze. When lettuce freezes it gets a fungus, and that fungus went airborne. Once a fungus gets airborne it's over. 80% of the crops got wiped out."
The loss of lettuce and other key produce crops has driven the price up dramatically and made McPherson's job far more time consuming. He buys from wholesale warehouses and farmers "In summer it would take me 2 hours to shop, now it takes me 5. I go to 6 warehouses to get the best prices."
But business has been slow. "I'm set up beautifully, we've got the product. We just need people in," McPherson said. "We've got Honeycrisp apples at $1.99 a pound and we're getting a deal this week because we bought 800 pounds of Fuji apples which we're going to sell for 69 cents a pound. We run specials every week."
As an example of the leap in produce costs McPherson points to limes. "They used to be $20 a case now they are nearly $80 a case. "We've managed to get limes for around $60 a case."
"Everyone tells me right now we're under pricing all the supermarkets," McPherson said.
He's got relationships with a number of local restaurants as their produce supplier including West 5, Easy Street, Feedback Lounge, Porterhouse, Avalon, Guadaljara and Locöl, but the profit margins are very small. "As I said to my wife, honey it's a lot of work but it's consistent."
As the weather warms the produce business should improve too. "I've just got to hang on another month," McPherson said, "But I've got to say, the support of West Seattle has been unbelievable and if I make it, it will be the proudest thing I've ever done. We just need people to come in."
West Seattle Produce is located at 4755 Fauntleroy Way s.w. and they are open from 7:00 am to 7:00 every day. Their phone number is 206-906-9727
