In this episode, Nick Portillo sits down with Ryan Staniscavage, president of First Pick Produce, for an in-depth look at the fresh produce supply chain. Ryan breaks down how factors like weather impact pricing and availability, while also sharing strategies for navigating the ups and downs of crop markets. The conversation sheds light on why strong industry relationships and a commitment to quality are at the heart of First Pick Produce’s success, and why communication is key to keeping fresh produce moving to operators across the country. 

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Intro

00:45 - Diving into Fresh Produce

07:34 - The Journey into the Ag Business

10:10 - Building Relationships in Food Service Brokerage

24:52 - Market Volatility and Its Impact on Produce Pricing

32:49 - Reflections on a Career in the Produce Industry

RESOURCES

Portillo Sales

CONTACT 

Nick: nick.portillo@portillosales.com

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one. On the Titans of Food Service podcast.

I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. Let's jump right into it. Hello and welcome back to another.

Welcome to another episode of Titans of Food Service. I'm your host, Nick Portillo. Thank you again for joining me. Please, if you enjoy the channel, if you can leave me a five star review.

Whether you follow along on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcast, that would mean a lot. It helps with the reach of this channel. Okay. Today I'm diving into the world of fresh produce.

And to do so, I'm inviting someone who truly lives and breathes the produce business, Ryan Stanis Scavage, the president of First Pick Produce. First Pick was founded on a powerful belief the freshest produce should come with the strongest relationships.

And Ryan's built a company that delivers just that, with deep roots in farming, a relentless. A relentless focus on quality, and a network that spans growers, shippers, and suppliers across the entire country.

In the episode, we're going to explore some different topics, things like how weather pattern has affected supply, the pros and cons of imports versus domestic crops, and some tips and tricks that food service professionals should know about crop markets heading into their next buying season, among other topics. But if produce is your thing or food service is your thing, the food business, agriculture business is your thing, you're at the right place.

Ryan's insights, you're going to find they're honest, tactical, and grounded in decades of experience. Whether you're in distribution, procurement, or just curious about what drives the produce world, this episode has something for you.

Okay, let's get into it. Let's go ahead and welcome Ryan. All right, Ryan, welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast.

Man, I appreciate you taking time to come on and join me.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I know we're talking a little off camera that you, you know, you went to Alabama in undergrad and, and you still live in Alabama here today. Have you grown up in Alabama? Alabama, your whole life?

Well, I'm originally from Mississippi. I went to high school in, in south Alabama. And after college, I graduated college right after 9 11, so worst time.

So I bought my time by continuing my education at Utah State. And that's really where I fell into the ag industry.

When I started working in Salt Lake and then got sent out to California and Monterey, came back home and worked about five or six more years and then went to South Florida and then up to Virginia and then back home. So, so we've been all over.

Yeah, you really have been. And I've, I've been to Mississippi three times in my life, all four. I went to Oxford each time for an Ole Miss football game. One time to play. Yes.

And, man, it's cool. And I'm a USC Trojan fan, you know, living here in Southern Cal, and they've got a pretty good tailgate.

You know, it's, it's a good experience when you go to the stadium. It is a little, you know, they never really fill it up. You know, here in Southern Cal, they always like to say, like, there's other things.

You know, it's sunny out, you go to the beach, you can go to Disneyland. So it's hard, you know, I don't know. They just never really fill the stadium.

But, you know, going to the Grove there in, in Oxford is a different difference.

Wonderful experience.

It is. It, yeah. It's a really nice campus and the little old town that's right there.

And I, I, I tell people when I win, it's, it's very much, I mean, obviously a sporting event, social event. I mean, you've got your, a family event, like people's. You know, there's multiple generations there. It's a political event.

You know, people have their pins of whatever politician they're pushing for. It's, it's, it's pretty cool.

It is, it is.

And football tailgating and really in the sec, I think, I think for all but one, maybe one team, I can think on the top of my head, and that's probably changing a lot now. It is, is a wonderful experience, no matter, really, where you are. All the colleges are just, it's just a, it's a wonderful thing.

How's the Alabama tailgate?

It's, it, it's a lot of people and, but it's, it's a lot of fun, too, but I've gotten, as I've gotten older, I kind of prefer to watch it on tv.

Yeah, I get that. So tell me, so you, you mentioned you've moved around to different states. You know, coming Utah State, coming out to California.

I mean, you've been around. What made you want to get into the ag business?

Well, actually, I kind of fell into it. I started with C.H. robinson, which I think is commonplace for a lot of young people.

It's, and it really is It's a wonderful company to start with and to get your feet wet. I started there and kind of fell into it and, and just really enjoyed it.

And I tell you what kind of hooked me initially was walking through local stores or dealing with, you know, at local restaurants and knowing that, that I had a hand in what was there in the produce department or with the restaurant.

And that was kind of the, the hook, you know, I got to see a little bit of the results of the small part that I played and, and that really hooked me in the industry. And, and now, you know, it's, it's 20, 25 years later, and I can't really change because I don't know anything else.

It, it's funny about the food business. My dad, he had been in the, or food brokers, and he got me into the business years ago.

And it, the amount of times people say I got in and then I just never get out of the few that do leave, you know, they go be real estate agents or whatever they want to be. They come back. It's crazy. It's just.

Yeah, food service is very, you know, just the food business in general, agriculture, food service, retail, people just stay in the industry. It's fascinating. I don't know if other industries are like that or not, because I've not been in other industries, but it's, it's cool to see.

You know, it's a. It really is a small world if you think about it.

It really is. It really is. And, and the connections, you know, that I've made since I was younger have just been paramount to my success.

And people that I still keep up with and I still talk to, and everybody has moved, you know, and so it's just expanded into, to such a large net, you know, and, and I've learned so much about, about the leader that I wanted to be, the leader that I didn't want to be and, and really been able to pull from how people do business out west versus the south versus the East Coast. And, and, you know, it's. It's just been really paramount to, to who I've become in the industry.

Were you working at C.H. robinson when you moved to California? You moved back to the south, to the East?

Were you at the same company when you were, when you were doing all that?

No, so. So I was with C.H. robinson in California.

I was actually on site with Proact, and that put me into a position to where I got to meet distributors really from coast to coast. And ultimately I started dating my wife who was back Here in Alabama.

And so then I made the move and actually went to work with a proact member who the owner of that company was really like a work dad and loved him, was happy, thought that that was going to be where I, you know, my place for the rest of my life. And I was really happy with that. But he sold the company and when he sold, I ended up going and taking a job down in South Florida with a grower.

And it was my first experience on that side of it. And I loved the work and frankly, I hated the leadership.

It was one of those where you led by fear, you know, and, and that was the first instance where I started to mold on what I didn't want to be and what I didn't want to do. After that I had the opportunity to enter the executive area of the business with a grower in, in Virginia.

And I went there and, and it was an amazing experience. It was just a company that was full of wonderful people. And I learned from that CEO, I learned exactly.

Started narrowing down exactly who I wanted to be. He taught me about culture and leading with culture and hiring by culture.

At the time I was hired, I was the only produce person that they had ever hired and they had been around, I want to say, off the top of my head, I think about 25 years at the time. And so they were hiring strictly by culture and then developing the talent and it was just a wonderful place. And of course they sold.

And so then I came back to Alabama with my mentor, originally from Alabama, and got into brokerage and did that for about 10 years. And earlier this year I had the opportunity to start my own. And we've been growing like crazy.

We just added yesterday, we just added our fifth broker. And so we're stretching coast to coast and hitting all kinds of sectors and trying to focus on integrity and relationships.

And that's where we want to be.

We want our customers and our, our growers to view us as a partner and we're there to help whether they're making that transaction or not, you know, with us.

You know, we're, you know, I've sat and had breakfast with several customers in the past couple of months, helping them on things that didn't have anything to do with us.

But just through the experience that drawing on that that I've had in my past and, and you know, we really want both our vendors and our customers to realize we're here as an asset whenever they need.

You're brokering products to food service operators and distributors.

Most, most of so we kind of are a little different. Most of my customers, with the exception of a few, are wholesalers and, and food service distributors. I've got a gentleman named Craig Johnson.

He works mainly with food service distributors and his background Is K through 12 and government contracts like the DLA or the DoD.

I've got another out west named Mike Keegan and his, his strong points are wet veg for wholesale food service distributors, shippers doing intershipper transactions. Another one named Finn Wilson. He's, he's really strong with processors. He does a lot with them.

And then we've got a guy named NZ Garden down in Rio Rico whose really big focus is, is in the Hispanic market and Latin America, working direct with growers and getting it across the border. So we're really trying to touch as many areas as we can and draw on each other, you know, to help all of us be stronger.

You know, Mz, if we've got a customer over here that's looking for rice and dried beans, I've got that resource to help answer questions that I don't have the answers to.

So you kind of, you have the relationship kind of almost with the farmer in a way, and you're able to connect like the, the farm directly to the distributor or to a manufacturer. Is that kind of how you understand it?

In some cases, right? In some, it's just a shipper or an importer.

So it, we, we do connect all the way from, from the field all the way to, you know, right before the last mile delivery, whatever our customer needs and whoever they may be.

Yeah, I've not heard of this, you know, type of setup before. So I'm a food service broker, but we represent the manufacturers, they produce their product and we're at whatever state they're in.

And then we sell it into distributors or operators here, you know, like restaurant chains or K12 or, you know, working with the distributor reps. But it's a whole wide range of products. It's. We don't really like fresh produce. A lot of times it's like you're further processed in some way.

Maybe it's apples turned into applesauce or, you know, turned into pie fillings or whatever it may be, you know, but like fresh produce that you see like in the grocery store, like we really don't do. I like what you do. It's, it's, it's unique to me. I've not heard, I've not heard of it before.

Yeah, there's, there's other brokers out there and we, we try to make ourselves different, but by being, positioning ourselves to be a full partner. We're not after the transaction. If that's the way the customer wants it, then, then that's okay.

But, but we're there to be a resource and however we can help, and if we can help a food service distributor that's not distributing to, to schools to break into that, we'll help them on their bid process, we'll help them on how their strategy, on how many counties or districts do they take on initially those types of things, how to relate to, to the lunchroom ladies. I mean, they'll make or break. You know, they're either your best friend or your worst enemy.

So, so it's, it's how, you know, we'll help coach through all that. If our, our customer needs, needs that assistance.

Yeah. And you cover, I mean, it sounds like you, have you mentioned like four or five people all throughout the country.

So do you cover the whole U.S. that's our goal.

So our goal is to have someone in place in all of the major regions.

So we're still looking to, to get someone up in the Northeast and then, you know, with a strong import background and then trying to get someone in the Pacific Northwest with, you know, apples, potatoes and onions, those types of things. But our goal is to have access all over the country and Latin America and, and to have a resource for whoever our customer may need.

I mean, you know, a guy in Mississippi is going to sell potatoes and onions, and he's going to sell cantaloupe and grapes and strawberries.

And, you know, and we, we want to be able to speak intelligently about all of those items, you know, and help guide them and help them cover their supply issues.

What does the sales presentation look like for you? Like, when you go meet with one of these importers or shippers or distributors, what does that look like?

Well, we first, you know, the biggest thing we got to sell them on is ourselves. You know, I mean, the reality is, is when you're, when you're dealing with a buyer, price is what's eye catching?

Well, basically what we want to know is what's important, you know, and so it's really, most of the time when I'm meeting with a customer, I'm not meeting at the warehouse or, or in my office or their office. It's, let's, let's go break bread, you know, let's, let's go, you know, let's do it early in the morning, you know, so it's not interfering.

I, I have gotten up at midnight and driven six or seven hours to meet somebody at a bagel shop, you know, and let's just find out what's important, you know. You know, I don't want to throw things at them that aren't important to them.

Like, here's a price list of, of all of these items that you don't buy, you know, so, so let's just talk about the importance. Who's your competition? Who's your. What are your big customers?

Those types of things, you know, what's your, your target audience, you know, and it's different no matter depending on what market you're in. And then we'll build from there, you know, and we can get pricing just about on anything.

And there's some things, you know, when you get into the potato world, most people can't buy any better than another person. I mean, a price is a price.

And so then it becomes, you know, about the logistics of it, and it becomes, you know, how are we going to carry that past delivery, you know, and order volume, all those things? So it's one of these, you know, we bill ourselves as.

We're a group that is always going to act with integrity and we're going to do what's best for everyone. And I'll kind of give you an example. We.

Last week I had an issue with a wonderful customer in North Alabama where they had quality issues on some cabbage that they received probably four or five days earlier. @ that point, I've got no recourse, right? So I can't do anything with the shipper. But I don't tell my customer that.

I tell them, you know, I'll take care of you, you know, whatever it is, whatever you need, that's what we'll do. And, you know, some people, I think in, in my position start thinking, well, I'm going to lose money. It's just one transaction. We do.

We do this transaction every week, you know, and that's what I'm protecting, is I'm protecting the relationship.

And, and if I would have told that buyer that, hey, there's nothing I can do at this point, well, then that buyer's not going to trust me, you know, and, and so when I need help or when there's times when I might need to call that buyer to help fill out a truck, or if they have other issues or growth concerns or whatever it may be, they're not going to call on me. It's all about big picture. We truly want to build real partnerships with our customers and our growers.

Something that we're all working together and there's times when things will go bad for somebody in that, that triangle of a relationship. But that, that's okay. We're all, you know, we'll all work together and make sure that, that, that we can better ourselves moving forward.

So, but that's really kind of where it's at.

The products that you're selling.

Do you have a like, like essentially a contract in place with like certain producers or is it, hey, we've got access to all of this land, let's say in a certain area or maybe there's another intermediary at some, somewhere in between. How does that work?

So in there there are some instances, especially when you're dealing in the processing side where you do have volume commitments and contracts for supply and you know, they're, they're real formal most of the time in the distributor and wholesale world, it's, it's subject to the market volatility and, and so that's where we come in to be experts in the market. Same example, you know, every July, green pepper gets crazy. There's about a two week stretch.

Why is that?

Well, it's going from, you know, on the east coast, it's going from south to north, like Georgia up into the Carolinas and Michigan and Ohio and, and then there's always this, this gap and green pepper goes from really cheap to real expensive before everybody comes back in and the harvest at that time, you know, for a broker, you're, most of the people that you are likely to encounter are, is out of desperation. You know, it's a customer that's got to have green pepper and they're in a desperate mode.

You know, they've got somebody higher up barking down their throat or they've got one of their customers barking at them. And, and it's, and so as a broker, it's really easy to manipulate that. It's really easy to start capitalizing on this market.

And if you can get your hands on it, you can sell it for a large profit. However, through our conversations with growers, we knew when they were coming in.

And so as we got a little closer, we're telling our customers, hey, don't buy heavy, don't be reactive, you know, hold back and, and don't get caught because what's going to happen is, is you're going to order on Monday and you'll get the product on Wednesday and then Friday the product, the market's going to drop 10 bucks.

You know, so, so it's one of those Things, you know, where we want them to rely on us for this market information so we can keep them posted and, and build that relationship and build that trust.

Hey, if you need a pallet, grab a pallet, but don't grab two, you know, and, and as a buyer, it's, it's really easy to over buy in those types of markets because you don't want to be put in the position where you're scrambling, you know, the next day because you didn't buy enough and everybody's coming at you.

So, so it's all about just the, the knowledge of the market, talking to growers and communication and getting grower schedules and see what are they up against.

Because every day they're up against something new, you know, whether it's a failure and a transplanting or, you know, you've had some kind of crazy storm that they didn't think about that was coming in. And I mean, they could be a myriad of things.

So, so just staying on top of that and, and being an advocate for your customer, being an advocate for your grower, and then, then you can really build those relationships.

Yeah. I mean, fascinating.

Is there for all the pricing and everything, for all the different, you know, produce categories, is there like some sort of index, almost like a stock market, if you will, where someone can see pricing go up and down, or is it really on, you know, brokers like yourself to say this is where the pricing is or where it's going?

Well, typically the growers all talk to each other in each region, you know, okay. And so there's a lot of inside knowledge that they have. They, you know, and, and you can always tell on, on Mondays before they release their prices.

Sometimes it takes a long time to get prices because nobody wants to be the first one to set the market.

So, but, but yeah, there, there are indexes that the USDA puts out like the mid mostly and stuff, but they're really, they're really delayed, you know, and so they'll call all of these major movers, you know, every week to get, to get market information, but it's published so late that, that it's really behind the ball.

And if you're in a static market, that's not a big deal, but if you're in something that happens to be pretty volatile, then the mid mostly doesn't, doesn't really help you, you know, so we, we just try to stay out there and stay in front of our customers and say, hey, you know, expect this to go up next week. Expect this to come down this is kind of static. Maybe this is moving but not really noticeable. You don't have to worry about it.

Just to give them some knowledge on, on how they want to do things and, and if it's something that they're not buying from us and you know, we most likely don't know that they're buying it at all. But if they ask, we'll give that and supply that information.

We, like I said, we want to be full partnership and have them utilize us as much as, as much as they can.

Yeah, they use you as a resource and that's how you gain repeat business.

Right.

If they can trust you and your team. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious, you know, you've, you've used the word volatile a few times. Is there any example in your career.

This is a fun one, a fun question. An example of like a very volatile time that sticks out more than, than others.

Maybe it's due to weather or anything that comes to mind that it was like, wow, this was something I'll never forget.

Well, I think most people in my generation would probably go back to and I. You'd have to pardon me on the year they all kind of run together.

So I'm, I mean we were seeing anything from $80 to $85 fob a bushel, you know, and this is 20 years ago.

Yeah.

Or a 25 pound box. And, and they were selling on markets, you know, for 120 bucks. You know, anybody, any tomato that you could get your hands on was a good tomato.

It really didn't matter about quality at that time. I think, I think that McDonald's was getting ready to roll out the new burger and so they had to stop it because it had tomatoes on it.

Most of the fast food chains were taking tomatoes off of. Off of the menu as far as, you know, as a condiment. So, so that, that one. But there's several of them.

I mean that one was probably the one that, that really stands out the most. And they happen for different reasons. They can happen because of hurricanes. That's pretty common and effects can be down the road.

So we can have a hurricane and the market effect on it is 60 days from now because it hit a planning, you know, so I already hit a major region and we saw that in Georgia a couple of years ago. So you know there's, it can be just about any item and, and, but, but yeah, that tomato fiasco was. It made a lot of people some money too.

They could get them. But I bet.

I remember was it maybe, let's say a decade ago, maybe a little less we had the bird flu and affecting all of these chicken coops that, that were outside uncovered because the birds were flying over and obviously dropping into, into those cages or whatever they were on the, and they were getting sick. So anybody who had covered facilities, you know, fared better than those who didn't.

It's just interesting what you know, in this case, I know it's, it's birds flying over, but mother nature in general, with a hurricane or whatever it may be or maybe a dry season, you know, can, can spike the price of a tomato which would influence the decision making power of our decision making of a McDonald's who's a multi billion dollar corporation. And you would think like, oh, it's just a slice of a tomato on a, on a hamburger, but multiplied by I don't know how many hamburgers they sell.

That's a good sign. Yeah, they got it on all the signs. Yeah, that's, it's very fascinating how that all. What about like international.

Does the economics of you know, South American, European, Asian countries and their crop influence a lot of what you do here in the U.S. absolutely.

So, and I think, you know, most recently, you know, we think about limes. So most limes that, that are in the US are you know, offshore year round. So they're offshore from Mexico or they're offshore from Colombia and Peru.

And you know, they had a big storm season last season. Well, that had a negative effect. This, I want to say it was late spring, early summer.

And so you've reduced the supply from Colombia on limes and that creates and puts more pressure on the Mexican supply, which is the biggest supply for the US but because of the lack of supply that hits the ports on the east coast, then that, that Mexican supply becomes pricier. And so we've seen that, you know, we see it all the time. Asparagus is, can be pretty volatile.

You know, there's, there's just really a lot of items that, that you know, your summer squashes are like riding a roller coaster. And you know they're, they're quick to recover because they're 45 days for the most part from seed to harvest and they grow fast.

But, but they can, they can spike too. So heavy rains up and down the east coast can, can really change those markets pretty quick.

Yeah, I bet. Is there any fruits in general or produce in general? Whether it's fruits or vegetables that it's.

It's pretty stable where you really don't have to worry about those types of things?

No, I don't know that you don't have to worry. I would say probably historically your most stable crops or things that have long shelf lives, you know, you're. When you're talking apples and.

Or apples and potatoes and onions and hard squashes, those types of things that can be stored, you know, a year. So. So those types of things tend to be more stable.

They might peak, you know, apples might, you know, at the beginning of the school year, you're still working off of storage from the previous year's harvest. So the schools come in and they're wanting a lot of apples. You know, they're not being replenished that quick.

And so the market's a little elevated and it's. That. That's a good. A great time for an apple packer to kind of make up some revenue. So you might see that. But.

But by the time everybody in the Northern hemisphere is in full harvest, you know, then, then. Then it's pretty good if, if for a really stable market.

When you've got east coast versus west coast on the apples is when their size profile is different, you know, so if you have a year where the west coast size profile is big, which is what retailers like, and then the east coast profile is small, then everybody has a happy medium on the growing side, you know, so. But, but when they're all.

When they're both the same, you'll, you know, if they're both of their size profiles are small, then apples for schools, schools win and retailers lose and vice versa. So, so it's, you know, it's always changing, and that's what's kind of addicting to the produce industry.

Yeah. And what do you. What do you think for yourself? What is something you want to achieve in your career or a place you want to take your business?

I know you said the whole us, but is there anything in particular that. That you really want to achieve in your career that you've not yet achieved?

Well, I want a legacy, first of all, for. For my family and for my children, I think that's probably the most important.

But for my career, you know, I want to be a resource that is valuable to.

To not only the brokers that work with me, but to the customers that I've encountered and the farmers that we deal with and I want to leave everything better because I was in it, you know, and I have a heart for, you know, it's been. It's just. It's such a wonderful place.

I've had the opportunity to travel a lot globally, working with growers and farmers and almost every continent and really getting to do a lot of work here in the US and you meet so many really awesome people, from the people working the fields to all the way through the packing house and hearing their stories, it can be really moving. What got them here? Because really most of the people in the fields and in the packing houses are not from here.

And, and they've all got wonderful stories and they all bring their own culture and, and you get to experience that with them, you know, when, when you're eating lunch with them in the field, then. Then you're getting to have some type of experience with them. And, you know, it's just a. It's just a wonderful, wonderful industry to be in.

Amazing. Well, Ryan, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story, learning more about you. And I found a very, very eye opening.

I didn't realize, you know, and I like the structure that you have to with brokering in, you know, in the produce sector. I like that I didn't realize that, as I mentioned, that even existed, so. Super cool.

And I just want to say thank you for taking time to come and meet with me.

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on and inviting me.

Yeah, of course.