GrubMarket Acquires Specialty Fruit Provider
GrubMarket has continued its steady expansion with the acquisition of Bengard Marketing Inc., a provider of domestic and imported specialty fruits directly from sustainable growers in Chile, Argentina, Peru and New Zealand, as well as the United States. Bengard is one of the top two biggest providers of South American cherries and stone fruits on the West Coast.
Founded in 1978, Bengard has grown from a 200,000-package import program in the early 1980s to a 1 million-package program currently. It will remain based in Los Angeles and will be managed by its current leadership team.
The acquisition is GrubMarket’s sixth in the Los Angeles area. The company plans to keep strengthening its strategic presence in the region.
“We are delighted to join the GrubMarket family and look forward to the new growth opportunities that GrubMarket’s technology and network will bring,” said Bengard CEO Broc Bengard, adding that the company "built its success with buyers and suppliers on integrity and honesty. GrubMarket shares the same principles we have. Coming together allows us to promote the sustainability of healthy food from farm to fork and grow wherever suppliers and buyers need an honest, hardworking partner. For more than 35 years, it has been our honor to bring quality, freshness and food safety to the marketplace, a tradition to be continued as we move ahead.”
“Bengard Marketing is a highly reputable specialty fruit provider with a passion for people and produce,” noted GrubMarket CEO Mike Xu. “They created a business sector of sourcing sustainable Fairtrade produce from South America, and have since then been a top provider of cherries and stone fruits from South America. Their customer-centric team works directly with sustainable growers in Chile, Argentina, Peru, New Zealand and the United States to supply high-quality fruits to the U.S. market. We are thrilled to welcome them to the GrubMarket family. Together, we will strengthen our customer base and extend our grower network to Latin America and Oceania. Their deep insights of cross-continent food supply chain, logistics and warehouse management will also benefit the evolution of our software technology.”
Bengard will also now be able to use GrubMarket’s proprietary WholesaleWare software suite, its software-as-a-service platform providing food industry suppliers and vendors with financial management, online ordering and sales, inventory management and CRM tools.
San Francisco-based food technology startup GrubMarket operates in the food e-commerce space and provides related technologies to solve inefficiencies in the American food-supply chain. The company operates in California, Washington, Texas, Michigan, New York and Massachusetts, with plans to expand to other parts of the country.
