Southern Specialties offers variety, vertical integration

Southern Specialties started nearly 20 years ago as an importer of produce from Guatemala, but a food safety scare caused the company to expand its supplier base and growth expanded from there. The Pompano Beach, Fla.-based company is now a vertically integrated grower, shipper, importer, re-packer and processor of specialty fruits and vegetables.

Southern Specialties offers a diverse product mix, from tropical fruit to fresh-cut vegetables grown from South America to Canada.

The company debuted the latest additions to its Southern Selects line at United Fresh Marketplace May 15-18 in Chicago. The line now includes fresh-cut vegetables, and interest from the show may mean future additions to the fresh-cut offerings.

Cyclospora Scare

Robert Colescott, president and CEO of the company, formed Southern Specialties in 1990. He’d worked as an importer for a Florida company that was pioneering specialty produce, primarily from Central and South America. After the owner of that company retired, he decided to start his own import company.

Southern Specialties imported specialty items from Guatemala, but in the mid-’90s there was a Cyclospora cayetanensis scare – and the cause was thought to be Guatemalan blackberries, which happened to be one of the company’s products. It wasn’t until months later that the actual cause of the cyclospora was identified as Mexican strawberries, but the crisis caused the corporate leaders at Southern Specialties to evaluate their business model.

They decided to grow their company by expanding the growing regions and by having strict controls over the production of every product. Every product is monitored from the seed stage, something the company can do because it has a monetary interest in each supplier, said Charlie Eagle, vice president of business development for Southern Specialties.

“At that time, we decided that if we didn’t concern ourselves with controlling every part of production, we would not be able to grow our business – we might even lose it,” Eagle said.

“That’s when we started making investments in farms and facilities.”

Community Partners

Food safety is non-negotiable these days, and Southern Specialties has worked to improve controls all the way through the line.

“Everyone is concerned about quality and food safety,” Eagle said. “Today it’s a no-brainer.”

Fruit and vegetables sold by Southern Specialties come from a diverse base. Guatemala, Brazil, Belize, Canada, Mexico and the United States all contribute to the product mix. And while there is often the perception that Central and South American production standards are below U.S. standards, Eagle said that is not the case. Many of the growers and packers ship to Europe, which is even more restrictive than the United States.

“We kind of lose track of the fact that Europe has tougher standards than we do,” Eagle said.

In fact, Eagle said customers that have visited Southern Specialties’ partners in Central and South America have been surprised by the food safety protocols – in most cases the plants and fields have stricter controls than in the United States.

At those sites, Southern Specialties also has invested in sustainable practices. Sustainability has become a buzzword in recent years, but Eagle said the company was doing it before someone gave it a name. Sustainability is more than environmental practices, too, Eagle said.

“We get involved in sustainability, so we get involved in the community,” he said.

Some of the efforts have included building a clinic and paying livable wages.

“If we take care of these people, they’re going to take care of us,” Eagle said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

“That kind of stuff trickles down.”

Improving the community’s health standards benefits the company while doing something good. Worker health is improved, which reduces the risk of sick workers contaminating produce with some of the nastiest pathogens in the fields and packing houses.

“You certainly want people to be healthy,” Eagle said.

Those investments have helped Southern Specialties improve relationships with retail and foodservice customers, “not through cheap prices, but with true value,” Eagle said. Providing true value means that products have to be safe, they have to be high in nutritional value and from a source that is reliable. Letting customers know about the firm’s food safety controls and practices has helped Southern Specialties grow and attracted more buyers – from foodservice providers to retail supermarkets and club stores.

“We want the best customers out there,” Eagle said.

Southern Specialties now operates U.S. offices in Atlanta, Seattle, Buena Park, Calif., McAllen, Texas and its headquarters in Pompano Beach. International offices are in Chile, Guatemala, Peru and Mexico. Fresh-cut processing takes place at the Texas and Florida facilities, in addition to the produce that is processed in other countries and brought in, Eagle said. The staff – now totaling about 130, 15 of those in sales and support – has become adept at logistics, which customers appreciate. In Florida, the company owns a trucking firm that moves product in the state, but in the other states and internationally, third-party suppliers handle shipments.

New Products

Southern Specialties’ latest additions to its Southern Selects line were rolled out nationwide in June to supermarkets and club stores. The fresh-cut items in the line include green and white asparagus in 12-ounce and 2-pound microwavable bags and haricots verts, a premium green bean trimmed on one end and also packaged in a microwavable bag.

“We want to be able to reach other homemakers,” Eagle said.

Future products will be aimed at making the product more accessible and visible. At United Fresh Marketplace, Southern Specialties displayed additions to the Southern Selects line, and Eagle said some retail customers were interested in doing trials of the products. The fresh-cut vegetables are packaged in trays with a microwavable film vacuum-sealing the product. The film expands when heated, so the vegetables can be cooked without puncturing the film. Eagle said the new products were only speculative, but with the growth seen from the haricots verts and asparagus, there would likely be more products added to the Southern Selects fresh-cut lineup.

The company is fortunate to have a diverse customer base because of its product mix, so it’s difficult to market one product to one customer. But Eagle said the expanded product line would put the Southern Selects brand and the Southern Specialties name into more hands.

“This is really the first year at making a serious attempt at marketing ourselves,” he said.