Company steps in to fill schools’ hunger for produce
NorthCoastNOW
ELYRIA — A story last week about skyrocketing food prices posing a problem for school lunch programs prompted one area business to take action.
Fuel surcharges and high produce costs were forcing schools to change their menus — applesauce instead of apples in Avon Schools for example — or their shopping procedure — such as schlepping food from Sam’s Club to North Ridgeville Schools.
This gave one produce-delivery program an idea: offer its service to these school districts. All Ohio Produce Inc. saw this as an opportunity to expand its business and help out some schools at the same time.
“It was so weird that I picked up that paper and saw the article,” said Annette Zak, fiancee of Demetrius Patouhas, who owns the company along with his father, Charles.
“Within two days we had three new school districts,” Zak said.
Those districts were North Ridgeville, Westlake and Avon.
The company gets produce daily from the Northern Terminal in Cleveland and delivers it with no fuel surcharge to nursing homes, restaurants and, now, schools around Cleveland and Lorain County.
Peggy Adamic, food service supervisor for North Ridgeville Schools, was excited when she got the call. The district had a produce deliverer back in 2003, but rising fuel prices forced the deliverer to change its deliveries from Mondays to Thursdays.
“Having fresh produce delivered on a Thursday is no good,” she said. So, the district cut the supplier and shifted to larger providers Gordon and Sysco.
Recently, fuel surcharges have caused Adamic to pine for the days of independent produce deliveries.
“I find they have a higher quality of produce,” she said. “So this is the best option we’ve had since we lost our produce vendor.”
Contact Michael Baker at 329-7128 or mbaker@chroniclet.com.
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Filed by NorthCoastNOW April 25th, 2008 in Local and State.
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