For 23 years, our produce buyer Bob Tevlin has been personally responsible
for the quality of the produce at Vallerga’s Market. Three nights a week,
(sometimes four or five near holidays) Bob drives to the Jerrold Street
Produce Market in San Francisco, as well as to the Golden Gate Terminal
Produce Mart near the San Francisco Airport. He walks nine miles each night,
prowling the marts to find the best produce to bring back to our
customers. Follow him along below to see how he does it.
- Leave Napa at 12:30 a.m.
- Bob pulls out the Vallerga’s truck and heads south on 29 to Vallejo, and then onto I-80. The dark roads are nearly empty with almost a mile until the next vehicle, and he sips coffee as he drives. We cross the Bay Bridge (two other cars the whole way), past the skyline of San Francisco, and take an exit as 80 becomes 101.
- 1:42 Arrive at Jerrold Street Produce Mart
- Bob grabs his clipboard, a folding knife with which to sample fruit and produce, and a giant marker to write “Vallerga’s” on the produce boxes he wants to buy--and he is off. Around us forklifts zip around in the dark, speeding from the two facing rows of warehouses and loading docks to the trucks of buyers.
- 1:58 a.m. -- Stanley Produce
- Bob starts here, looking for mushrooms, avocados, and fresh spinach mix. He finds the avocados—perfectly ripe—and out comes the marker. He stacks six boxes of them on a hand truck and wheels them to the front to be taken to his truck by those speedy forklifts.
- 2:10 -- Berti Produce
- Here Bob looks through portabella mushrooms. He holds up the top box, which has some slightly irregular mushrooms among the nice ones. “If I had just ordered the mushrooms [rather than hand select them], they might have sent this box.” He goes down four more boxes, pulls two from there, and replaces the top five. He does same thing with summer squash, and when he opens the box you can feel warm air rising off the squash. “It’s still warm from the field,” he says. Here, he also tastes and selects sweet corn, but passes on green onions.
- 2:30 Parkview Produce
- Here Bob finds ripe mangoes, but first takes the best fruit from six boxes, puts them into three and then buys those three boxes. “See how much better that is?” he asks, holding up a box filled with ripe mangoes He also buys bananas, which are slightly green. They will ripen today in the back of the store, go on the store shelf tomorrow as near yellow. “The next day, at the customer’s home, they are yellow all over, perfect.”
- 2:44 Jacobs, Malcom, Burtt
- Bob opens a box of cantaloupes. ”I’m going to have to buy some of these,” he says, “they’re too good to pass up.” As he caps his pen, a pallet stacked high with red and white boxes still wrapped in plastic bands passes by. “Green onions,” he says, and his eyes follow down the loading dock. “And it’s the brand I like.”
