'Fruit with the fun factor', this is the slogan for BB Fruit, and this is what the 2.5 year young company is trying to realize everyday. Bart Peek and Ben van der Bom have been in the fruit trade their whole lives, and with their own company they have found a way to make their hobby a profession. BB Fruit provides domestic wholesalers and market traders with citrus, bananas and summer fruit, mainly of Spanish origin. "However, we stay far away from mass production, and we prefer to work with small suppliers that bring their high quality products to the market with love. It is exactly that small scale that has charm for us. Many of our customers come to look at and collect the fruit themselves ," says Bart.
This year the Spanish citrus season ended slightly earlier than usual for BB Fruit; in recent years BB Fruit has been filling this gap with summer fruit from Spain. "Many citrus growers in Spain also have a soft fruit branch, and we buy apricots, nectarines, Saturn peaches, plums and cherries from them. We are talking about a few pallets at a time. That fits us and secretly we find that the charm of the sector. We enjoy working with fruit and with people. In our profession things change quickly, so there is plenty of life in the sector," says Bart. "We still have low nectarine supply because the northern nectarine area in Spain is two weeks behind production; the supply will slowly start coming in next week. Furthermore, you see that a product like the Saturn peach is becoming more and more a stand-alone product and has taken over some of the peaches, something that has never really succeeded with the flat nectarines."
According to the fruit trader, something that is interesting for this day-and-age is that you can't just go off automation. "In the past you were guaranteed crowds and extra sales on all the free days. Nowadays you can't count on that as much and the market is affected by trends that are not so easily tested anymore. Of course, when it is 20-25 degrees you will sell more watermelons and summer fruit, but there are other movements in the market that are not easily tested. Take last week for example; the cherries started at a nice price level, and despite the great weather, at the end of the week the price crashed because apparently importers had too much supply, and this week the price is back to normal. But that's also the beauty of our profession, no day is the same."
For more information: