It was
over 90 years ago that Peter Carcione, who came to America
from Sicily as a teenager looking for opportunities, opened
a small retail grocery store in San Francisco.
He began
shopping the San Francisco Produce Terminal hours before sunrise
each morning to select produce to stock his shelves for the
day. Later, he became a wholesaler on the market and kept
similar hours, vending produce to buyers who walked the market
each morning while the rest of the world slept.
Times
have changed since then, but with few exceptions, produce
terminal operating hours have not.
Peter
Carcione’s grandson, Pete Carcione, president of Carcione’s
Fresh Produce in South San Francisco and a third-generation
produce man, thinks they should.
Back when
his grandfather was in the produce business, those hours were
necessary, he said. Today they are not, he believes, due primarily
to refrigeration. “Refrigeration has changed everything,”
he said.
In his
grandfather’s day, the produce that was brought into
the market still had the field heat in it, Mr. Carcione said.
It was highly perishable. If lettuce, for example, was not
sold within a day, “it would wilt and would look terrible
the following day.”
Now, thanks
to refrigeration and improved post-harvest technology, produce
has a longer shelf life. Precooling removes the field heat
almost immediately after harvest, and the cold chain is maintained
throughout the distribution system. Refrigerated display cases
keep the products fresh at store level. Even highly perishable
items such as lettuce can be purchased at least a day ahead,
Mr. Carcione noted, so it is no longer essential for buyers
to get up in the middle of the night to go to the market to
pick out products for the day’s business.
But old
habits die hard, and although technology has made it unnecessary
for buyers to be on the market at 2 a.m. every day, they continue
the tradition. And of course, the vendors on the market continue
opening their stalls at that early hour to accommodate them.
But “I’m convinced,” he said, that once buyers
got used coming to the market at a more reasonable hour, such
as 6 a.m., they would actually prefer it.
Mr. Carcione’s
grandfather opened his little retail store, along with a partner,
on Green Street and Columbus Avenue in San Francisco in the
mid-1920s. “In those days, there was no refrigeration,”
and buyers, who were generally the store owners, “would
have to go to the market every day,” not only for fruits
and vegetables but for “live chickens, ducks and rabbits”
that they would sell in the store, he said. “In those
days, San Francisco had many, many little stores,” as
many people did not have automobiles and would walk to the
corner store to do their shopping.
“My
grandfather would come down in the morning to the market,”
he said, and one of the wholesalers with whom he did business
regularly was Scatena-Galli Fruit Co. which was owned by Lorenzo
Scatena and his two step-sons, A.P. Giannini and George Giannini.
“George, especially, became very good friends with my
grandfather,” and soon he was offered a job as a salesman
at Scatina-Galli, so he sold his store and began his career
as a produce wholesaler.
Later,
when the Giannini brothers went into the banking business,
opening the Bank of Italy near the market, they turned the
produce business over to Mr. Carcione’s grandfather.
The company later relocated to the Golden Gate Produce Terminal
in South San Francisco.
Mr. Carcione
got his first experience in the produce business working for
his grandfather at Scatiena-Galli. “I was in the eighth
grade,” he said. “My grandfather put a sales coat
on me … and I was selling figs for him.”
Most produce
back then, and even through the 1970s, was grown by small
local growers who would deliver their products to the market
each day. But with the advent of hydrocooling, vacuum cooling
and refrigerated transportation, the small growers —
if, in fact, they continued to farm at all as property values
rose — joined cooperatives that gave them the ability
to precool their products and market them across the country.
They no longer had to rely on the local terminal market.
“Produce
is not as perishable as it used to be,” Mr. Carcione
said. “It lasts.” And that makes it at least theoretically
possible for produce buyers and produce wholesalers alike
to “get up later and have a better life.”
It’s
time to change the operating hours of the market, Mr. Carcione
believes. Business is healthy, he said. The increased availability
of produce is making people’s lives more healthy. But
market hours need to change “to make our lives more healthy.”
Having to be on the market by 2 a.m. is hard on everyone who
works on the market, and it is hard on their families, he
said. “Most of these workers are here on four or five
hours sleep.”
Having
better operating hours for the market would make it easier
for produce companies to hire and keep good employees, he
said. Many potentially good employees who might otherwise
enjoy a produce career won’t even consider it because
of the terrible hours.
(For more
on the Bay area, see the Jan. 12 issue of The Produce News.)
