Chelan Fresh, based in Chelan, WA, announced the addition of Jeff Niesz to its operation’s sales staff.

“Our business has been pretty consistent throughout the summer and into early fall,” said Patrick Burke, sales and purchasing representative for Garden Fresh Salad Co. Inc., located at the New England Produce Center in Chelsea, MA. “People are really looking for high-quality products, and they hold us to very high standards. We live up to those standards 99.9 percent of the time by providing good product at a fair price and great service.

“We see okra being the next big thing,” said Mark Vertrees, marketing director for Agritrade Farms, a grower, shipper and importer headquartered in Deerfield Beach, FL. “Okra has historically been a very ethnic-oriented food that we envision quickly going strongly mainstream. It has phenomenal health and wellness attributes, which is where we are focusing much of our marketing efforts. We are also trying to increase the shelf life of okra by using modified atmosphere technology in retail packaging.”

ANAHEIM, CA — Thinking ahead and not trying to imitate past successes was the common theme of the two breakfast keynote speakers during the Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit, held Oct. 17-19, here.

Complacency, repetition and protecting what you have achieved are three “traps” that businesses fall into, admonished Jeremy Gutsche, founder of Trendhunter.com and the main speaker at the Oct. 18 general session.

Following the Produce Marketing Association's Fresh Summit Convention & Expo held Oct. 17-19 in Anaheim, CA, exhibitors donated 217,667 pounds of produce to Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County. Over the past decade, PMA exhibitors have donated more than 2.9 million pounds of fresh produce to communities in need in the United States.

“We’ve been super-busy here at our Boston location,” Glenn Messinger, general manager of Baldor Boston told The Produce News. “We simply do not have a slow season.”

Its parent company, Baldor Specialty Foods in the Bronx, NY, is a leading distributor of a full line of conventional, organic and specialty foods, and it feeds the Boston facility with the same high-quality products it offers its customers further south.