EVERETT – With two workers expertly wielding knives and a dicing machine to create well-manicured vegetable pieces nearby, Kelly Locking reviewed her inventory of cut carrots.
Matchstick carrots, julienne carrots and crinkled carrot rounds are among the 10 different styles Shawn’s Quality Produce carries.
Which is why the produce wholesaler and processor supplies restaurants around the Puget Sound region. The Everett-based business can deliver customized orders of fresh fruit and vegetables that the bigger competition doesn’t always offer.
“A customer can order one pepper, or one stalk of celery. … We have no minimum orders,” said Locking, who co-owns the business with her husband, Michael. “The corporate competition can’t do that.”
Similarly, the Lockings know of only one other produce wholesaler in the region who provides cut fruit and vegetable products such as Shawn’s.
Since offering processed produce about five years ago, the business has seen demand take off. In addition to the array of cut carrots, Shawn’s workers put together everything from five-pound bags of kale for salad bars to smaller packages of mixed and cut vegetables for soup stock, Kelly Locking said.
“They tell us what they want cut and how they want it,” she said.
Workers keep the processed inventory on the shelves thin, as they try to cut produce the day it comes in and then ship it to customers the next day.
Other freshly processed items available from Shawn’s include cut vegetable trays and cups of fruit mixed with yogurt.
Those products carry the logo of Shawn’s alter-ego brand, Washington Fresh. Customers include local outlets of Quizno’s, Subway and Papa Murphy’s Pizza, as well as sit-down restaurants including Canyons and Red Hook Brewery. A few grocery stores also carry seasonal items from Washington Fresh.
While Shawn’s can charge more for the cut and processed items, restaurants tend to like them because it saves on labor and cutting injuries in their kitchens. The processed items also come in easier-to-store packages than boxes of whole, uncut produce.
“It’s a great selling tool for us,” Locking said.
But Shawn’s also sells and delivers fresh, uncut produce, handling about 100,000 pounds each week. That’s about what it takes to fill three semi-truck trailers.
In one of the storage rooms chilled to teeth-chattering temperatures at Shawn’s Quality Produce, Locking pointed out fresh peaches and marionberries grown in this state and fragrant pineapples from Hawaii. Boxes full of tomatoes, varieties of lettuce and peppers were stacked nearby.
The local produce Shawn’s buys ranges from Skagit County potatoes to cabbage grown in the Kent Valley.
“If it grows, we’ve either got it or can get it,” she said, recalling the time she was able to find swizzle sticks made from sugar cane for a particular customer.
The Lockings took over Shawn’s in 1993, but their experience in the business goes further back. Three generations of Michael Locking’s family operated a produce stand at Pike Place Market, and he and Kelly Locking worked for a large food and produce wholesaler for a number of years.
When the original owner of Shawn’s offered to sell them the business, the Lockings jumped at the chance.
The 24-hour, six-day-a-week operation begins delivering its produce to local restaurants and stores between 5 and 6 a.m. most mornings. While the business doesn’t charge a delivery fee, even in this era of high gas prices, some food buyers for restaurants prefer to stop by and pick out their produce in person at Shawn’s.
The Lockings, who work out of a main office decorated with sports jerseys, bats and other items signed by Ichiro Suzuki, Pete Rose and Sammy Sosa, compare their daily business to working with the stock market.
They end up haggling over nickels and dimes when buying their produce all over the West Coast, arranging for truck transportation and then selling to customers, Kelly Locking said.
“There’s never a dull moment,” she said.
Their competition includes national restaurant food distributors such as Sysco Corp. and Food Services of America based in Seattle and regional companies.
The large supermarket chains all tend to use their own produce distribution networks, though they call Shawn’s when they need certain fruit or vegetables on short notice.
But with its niche in customized produce items and its local emphasis, Shawn’s is able to compete. And business is getting better as the restaurant industry recovers from a slump that began in 2001, Locking said.
Other recent trends, such as greater salad consumption at restaurants in the wake of low-carb diets, also is helping. Right now, the processing side of the business is fully housed in one room in the basement floor of Shawn’s south Everett warehouse, but Locking hopes that may change in the not-too-distant future.
“I think the processing will be bigger than wholesaling eventually, because everybody wants everything sliced and diced,” she said.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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