Refrigerated Eden

A revival sermon and a lifelong love of produce are behind one of North America’s largest independent wholesalers of fruits and vegetables

by Wally Kroeker

If the Garden of Eden had needed a refrigerated warehouse it could have been called Four Seasons Produce Inc. A sense of biblical bounty, not to mention horticultural awe, rises up within one during a tour of the mammoth fruit and vegetable facility.

The pallette of colors is spectacular – luminous green limes, scarlet bell peppers, glistening eggplants with the sheen of ebony. There are apples from New Zealand, grapes from Chile and oranges from California.

There’s little that a tree or field can produce that you won’t find here.

You have to hustle to keep up with owner David Hollinger on a striding tour of the Four Seasons facility on the outskirts of Ephrata, Pa. Propelled by both zeal and fitness, he sets a brisk pace through the long aisles, stacked high with cartons of cooling produce from all over the globe, some 600 different items in all.

He notices if something doesn’t look right. “If a stack of oranges is leaning,” he says, “I want it fixed. I’m a bit of a perfectionist.”

That shows. The floor is spotless and the stacks of pallets are precisely aligned – even though they are purely temporary. Nothing stays here long. It’s just a pause from field to table.

More than 70 semi-trailers of produce go out from here every day to New England, to North Carolina, to Ohio, a 15-state area comprising 50 to 70 percent of the U.S. population.

As he ponders Four Seasons’ role as one of the largest independent produce wholesalers in the country, Hollinger muses about the daily, incremental decisions that can be so pivotal to a career.

“You never know the effect the decisions you make will have on your family and future generations,” he says.

In his case, it was the blunt message of a revival preacher many years ago that ended up putting him in the produce business.

The story is well known in Lancaster County, where legendary evangelist George Brunk conducted meetings back before Hollinger was born. Among other things, Brunk preached against growing tobacco, then a staple for many Mennonite farmers. One of those who came under conviction (the local newspaper carried photographs of Mennonite farmers plowing down their tobacco) was Hollinger’s father who was then farming with David’s grandfather.

“My grandfather couldn’t understand it,” David remembers being told. “We always raised tobacco. That was your cash crop.”

The clash of opinions on the matter led Hollinger’s father to leave the farm and strike out on his own (though their personal relationship remained intact).

David’s parents began truck farming near Ephrata, raising vegetables to sell. Their modest roadside stand evolved over the years into a full-fledged farm market.

“My first love was produce,” Hollinger says. “I’ve always loved fruits and vegetables, their aroma and color, and how they changed with the seasons. It’s vibrant; it’s a live food.”

As a child he always had gardening projects, like raising gourds and Indian corn.

“When I was eight years old I grew my first scallions and sold them in the store. I made $3.50. My mother taught me to tithe on that. I remember taking 35 cents out of it and putting it in the offering.” (Later he was surprised to find that not everyone had been raised that way. “I thought everybody tithed.”)*

Hollinger went along with his father on buying trips to the wholesalers’ market in Philadelphia. A passion for wholesale was kindled.

Soon after he got married Hollinger decided it was time to do something “more noble than business,” a common view at the time. He and his wife, Debbie, went out on voluntary service to rural Mississippi where he worked in a farmers coop. He spent two years helping African-American farmers raise pimento peppers and pickles for a cannery. When he returned home he resumed work in the wholesale side of the family business, handling all buying and management. He would come to realize that business, too, offers many opportunities for noble service.

A pivotal, life-changing event came along in 1976 when the owner of a small business in Denver, Pa., died and his building came up for sale. The price for the 5,000-square-foot warehouse, along with some trucks and equipment, was $60,000. Hollinger had neither money nor a business plan, but the bankers next door saw something in him they liked.

“They gave us the money and a line of credit,” he says. “That’s how we started.”

Hollinger was now wholeheartedly in wholesale trade, distributing to grocery stores and restaurants. He would be as surprised as anyone by the persistent growth he would experience (averaging 18 percent a year in sales).

“We were in that location for nine-and-a-half years,” he says. “We doubled it to10,000 square feet. In 1986 we built another one down the road and thought that would be good for 20 years, but we had to add on three years later. By 2003 we had five warehouses.”

Last year they opened a mammoth new $25 million complex of 262,000 square feet, of which 176,000 square feet is refrigerated space with 176-foot long storage aisles that can store 6,700 pallets of product at various temperatures.

Listening to Hollinger and Ron Carkoski, president and CEO, explain the nuances of their industry is like taking a mini-course in food and nutrition.

A visit to their state-of-the-art banana and tomato ripening rooms opens up a discourse on ethylene gas, a natural plant hormone that triggers ripening. It’s the same aromatic substance that is released by freshly mown grass, Carkoski explains. Bananas begin to ripen as soon as they are exposed to it. “It does not ripen the fruit but triggers the process for the fruit to ripen itself.”

The presence of this gas impacts how other commodities are handled. Because apples and pears give off ethylene they aren’t stored near strawberries, raspberries or blueberries, which are very tender and ripen quicker. Likewise with lettuce and citrus, which aren’t shipped on the same truck because the ethylene given off by oranges can cause rusting in lettuce.

The sensitivities of different products mean the air in the storage has to be kept pristine. A system of scrubbers removes the ethylene or at least reduces it to mere parts per billion.

We visit the truck service center and official inspection station, a separate building with four bays that can do anything from a routine oil change to a complete engine overhaul. The company’s fleet consists of 75 power units, 88 trailers and 38 straight trucks. It’s one of the few fleets in the country to have dual-zone refrigerated units so that tomatoes, bananas and pineapples can travel at their ideal temperature of 55 to 57 degrees Fahrenheit while other produce is kept cooler.

David Hollinger’s personal values can be detected throughout the company.

The corporate logo shows concentric rings bounded by four principles: Integrity, Winning Culture, Dynamic Leadership and Exceptional Partnerships. These are bordered by a gold ring symbolizing the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Adhering to these principles has earned Four Seasons numerous industry awards for ethical trading practices and moral responsibility.

Effort goes into creating synergies, both internally within the Four Seasons family, and externally with customers.

While Hollinger expects accountability, he also thinks people function well in a climate of trust.

“A piece of advice I picked up a long time ago was to hire good people and turn them loose. Don’t stifle them. I realized after 15 years in the business that I was starting to burn out. I learned to delegate, to hire people better than me and let them blossom. I’m an entrepreneur but not an entrepreneur who wants to stay on top.”

Everyone is encouraged to think up creative ideas in their spheres of influence, says Hollinger.

In his case, one of those ideas was to get into organic produce eight years ago.

He remembers a minister preaching on healing. “Yeah, I thought, healing is great, but what about healthy eating in the first place?

“I was always kind of passionate about eating healthy, about healthy lifestyle, so my business, fresh fruits and vegetables, was a natural.

“I thought people ought to eat healthier. When others in the industry were dismissing organic foods, I said we should take this seriously.”

He had family support for this. His son, Jason, has worked extensively in Four Seasons’ organic department and the elder Hollinger gives him the credit for strengthening this segment. Jason is currently spending a year in Costa Rica with his family to learn Spanish, which will equip him for a stronger role in the company’s Latin American involvements. (Hollinger’s daughter Joleen and her husband Scott are involved in new home construction in Pennsylvania.)

Four Seasons is now a leading purveyor of organic produce in the northeastern U.S., with more than 300 lines of such products. Not only did it supply a niche market, it also got organic sales into the conventional marketplace.

“This year we are at 20 percent organic, and it keeps growing,” says Carkoski. “That concentration has allowed us to become a significant purveyor of organic products, not only to organic-centered businesses, such as health food stores and natural food stores, but also to conventional food stores who are now seeing the demand for organics increase and also are looking for a way to handle it.”

Helping customers solve their problems is key to Four Seasons’ philosophy.

“We want to be successful and profitable and we want our customers to be successful,” says Carkoski.

This has meant striving for supply chain consistency, customized packaging, inspecting to a customer’s specifications, helping customers who struggle with specialty produce or helping them keep stride with a changing ethnic marketplace.

Carkoski points to how Four Seasons tackled a problem some retailers were having with front-end error on organic produce. A cashier may not be able to immediately distinguish between an organic and a conventional red delicious apple. This can create problems of price differences and commingling.

“We developed a packaging program with its own dedicated price lookup numbers and UPC codes,” says Carkoski. “That solved the front-end problem, and also addressed the new USDA law that you cannot commingle conventional products with organic. Once they touch each other, the organic can no longer be considered organic.”

Marketing and distribution analysis has become a much bigger issue than it once was, and Four Seasons has seized opportunities to meld this into its customer service philosophy. With consolidations in the industry there are far fewer customers, but they are a lot bigger than they used to be. This changes the landscape and provides fresh opportunities for service.

“I’ve always had the philosophy, that whatever you promise, you give the customer even more,” says Hollinger. “When a customer gets more than he expects, he’ll be a happier customer.”

Carkoski sees the company as “a group of 450 people dedicated to each other’s success.”

Monthly team meetings, a weekly newsletter and a lot of frank talk are used to communicate a clear corporate vision and every individual’s role in it.

While Four Seasons is, at its simplest level, a buying and selling organization, it needs to be more than that, he says. “If we leave it at that level, we’re no different than anyone else who buys and sells produce. What we have to do is make sure that all our individuals are focusing their various talents and capabilities on the direction we’re going, namely to identify and provide solutions for our customers’ needs. Only if we are truly solving our customers’ issues will we truly be different than anybody else.”

SIDEBAR – Nutrition begins at home

When Four Seasons staff want a snack they don’t have to reach for a candy bar or muffin. They can help themselves to the commodity of the day.

Prominent in the company’s dining area is a colorful produce cart laden with that item. One day it might be red apples, another day yellow peaches or purple plums.

“If you truly want to be healthy you’re going to eat your ‘five a day the color way’,” says Ron Carkoski. “Each color represents a different phyto nutrient that the particular piece of produce has: anti-oxidents from the blueberries; lycopenes from the reds; vitamin C from the oranges and yellows; iron and so on from the greens.

“We try to provide several different colors each day and all of them in the course of a week.”

SIDEBAR – Safe & fresh

Since 9/11 food safety has been a priority in the campaign against terrorism.

Trace-back capability now makes it possible to identify a product’s complete history, even back to its seed and place of harvest.

“It’s important that food is handled appropriately, that it gets to people fresh,” says Ron Carkoski.

“Food safety is everything from making sure the building and grounds are secure, to proper handling, temperature and humidity control, to trace-back ability right to the seed company. We have to be able to provide, on four-hour notice, complete trace-up and trace-back on every item in this facility. Internationally, everything coming into the country has to be able to be traced back to its port of entrance into the U.S.”

This is a huge logistical task, he says, “but fortunately we have computers to help us manage it.”

* Those lessons stuck. Hollinger and his wife, Debbie, maintain a non-profit foundation to support charitable works, including three orphanages in India of which Debbie is overseer.