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Women-owned businesses
Pacific Produce: Facing discrimination, they bought straight from farms
Annie Sciacca
San Francisco Business Times
Date: Friday, September 27, 2013, 3:00am PDT
When Sarah Garcia and Jennifer Smith bought Pacific Produce, which offers wholesale produce and other groceries, in 2009, they discovered that the produce business is tough for women.
The distribution market in South San Francisco, where Pacific Produce had bought produce since its inception nearly 20 years ago, was “old school,” Garcia explained, almost entirely male.
“There were six-foot posters of naked women on the walls behind the cash register,” she said. But that was a minor problem. “They wouldn’t sell to us, or they would say, ‘We want cash first,’” Garcia said. “There was constant hazing.”
The two women’s presence in the South San Francisco produce community ruffled feathers, and things got uglier when they found sugar in the gas tanks of their trucks and industrial-sized nails in the parking lot near their trucks’ tires.
“I had never been so scared,” Garcia said. Even with support of former Pacific Produce owner George Pangiatopolis, who sold the business to Smith and Garcia and worked to find them alternative sources for produce buying, it was a struggle. “They had betting pools at the market about when we would go out of business,” Garcia said.
So she and Smith went straight to farms to buy produce directly. It turned out to be the best decision they made. They get better pricing and proudly market their farm-direct buying.
“We have learned how to buy on our own, how to make it work, and we are still here, doubled in size,” Smith said.
Smith and Garcia have steered their company from 2009 revenue of $11 million to a projected $22.8 million this year, a feat they are proud of, considering the struggle they faced.
Both women have deep business experience. Garcia worked in brand management and marketing for Kraft, Johnson & Johnson and L’Oreal, and spent a decade in CEO roles at companies involved in distribution, sourcing and warehousing. Smith, a CPA, spent 20 years in financial management. The two met in 2000 while working together at a furniture-making company. They joined forces. Pacific Produce appealed to them, Garcia said, because of the product’s tangibility and the creativity they could use. But when it came time to purchase, it was “the beginning of the end for the economy,” Garcia said, and the Small Business Administration had put a moratorium on loans. Smith sold her home; Garcia took a loan on hers. After meeting with about 20 banks, Garcia said, they landed a line of credit from Bank of San Francisco and support from Pacific Produce’s then-owner Pangiatopolis.
At first, Pangiatopolis admitted, he was a bit shocked that two women wanted to enter the male-dominated, tough business of produce. “The produce terminal is filled with semi-trucks, forklifts, hardened dock workers, eternally pissed off and, at times, crude salespeople and, of course, the brutally damp and cold weather of South San Francisco in the a.m.,” Pangiatopolis said. “What would make anyone — let alone two women — want a produce business? They were willing to compromise when needed and have an acute sense of what is fair and what isn’t,” he explained.
With a staff of about 50, Garcia and Smith have devised new systems, such as assigning each food to a lot in their warehouse to be able to identify batches that might be bad and redesigning routes to improve delivery efficiency. More women are taking leadership roles in the food and restaurant industry. “Things are changing,” Garcia said.
Pacific Produce
What it does: Wholesale distribution of produce, dairy and specialty products.
Owners: Sarah Garcia and Jennifer Smith.
HQ: South San Francisco.
Employees: 48.
2012 revenue: $18.2 million.
Rank: 20.
Pacific Produce: Facing discrimination, they bought straight from farms - San Francisco Business Times
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