GrubMarket revealed Tuesday that it has acquired Mendez International, a family-owned wholesale distribution business based in New York City's Hunts Point Produce Market. Mendez International is a provider of tropical fruits, including plantains, bananas, avocados, limes, mangos, and taro, sourced from its producer network across Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.
Currently led by the founder’s son, Felipe Mendez, the wholesaler began operations in 1988. It occupies six units at the Hunts Point Produce Market, a wholesale market. After the acquisition, the business will continue to be managed by its current team.
"When my father started this business over 35 years ago, he had a simple goal: work hard to build a food business based on trust and reliability that would last for many years. Now, after two generations of growth and cultivation, we continue to be a proud family-run business providing the freshest tropical produce to our customers,” said Mendez in a statement. “We are excited to join the GrubMarket team, who shares our passion for making fresh and healthy produce available to everyone, and we look forward to leveraging their ecommerce and software ecosystem to provide more tropical goods to GrubMarket's customers nationwide.”
As a part of GrubMarket's portfolio, Mendez International will use the food tech company’s WholesaleWare software suite, a software-as-a-service platform that provides food industry wholesalers and distributors financial management, sales and online ordering features, inventory management, lot traceability, grower accounting, and automated routing and logistics, as well as Orders IO, GrubMarket's mobile ecommerce solution.
"Felipe and his team have done an incredible job significantly growing both sales and profits over the past few years,” said Mike Xu, CEO of GrubMarket, in a statement. “We deeply respect their business savvy grounded in strong family values, which have allowed them to build strong customer relationships and provide high-quality foods at competitive prices for over three decades at the renowned Hunts Point Produce Market… This acquisition enables GrubMarket to further strengthen our presence along the East Coast, particularly in New York, and fortifies our global sourcing capabilities across Central America.”
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