Channeling fresh food to feed the people of Ontario.
Ralph Ranjit shows off some of the young vegetable seedlings grown on his Holland Marsh farm at the Ontario Food Terminal Tuesday. (May 24, 2011)
Staff photo/MARY GAUDET
If you've ever eaten a salad at a local restaurant, or done weekend shopping at one of the various fruit and veggie stands dotted along Bloor Street West, chances are that produce has passed through the Ontario Food Terminal (OFT).
"This place is critical to (Bloor West) for all those shops," said the OFT general manager Bruce Nicholas. "We're sitting here in an urban setting and we're feeding the people - not only the people of south Etobicoke, but the people all over Ontario."
Most drive past the 40-acre site on The Queensway at least once a week unaware of it and Nicholas is just fine with that. The terminal is strictly for those in the food service industry.
"We don't want to toot our own horn too much because we just don't have the bodies to keep the public out."
From Subway restaurants to Toronto celebrity chef Susur Lee, vendors here sell their produce to a wide variety of buyers.
The terminal moves no less that 5.3 million pounds of produce on an average day, with more than 400 vendors selling to 2,500 buyers.
"It's extremely competitive. They establish a business relationship," said Nicholas, who has been a part of the OFT since 1975, and manager since 2001.
Vendors are at their stalls around 2 a.m., setting up for the buyers who come in at 6:30 a.m. Stalls are 300, 400 or 600 square-feet-spaces on a parking lot, with a starting rental price of $3.23 per square foot.
For most vendors, this is a lifestyle that's been handed down for generations.
Charles Welsh of Welsh Bros. sells sweet corn, asparagus and other organic produce here twice per week.
"My grandfather was down here the very first year this terminal opened," said Welsh, who sells to Bloor West stores like Carload Fruit Market and Fresh and Wild. He hopes his son will eventually take over.
The leases on the stalls are renewable - making openings rare. According to Nicholas, there is currently a waiting list of more than 50 vendors who want to rent one of the 550 stalls in the farmer's market section of the terminal, where only local produce is sold.
The warehouse section has 21 spots. Here vendors sell international produce brought in from anywhere in the world, as well as Canadian product, in a refrigerated-controlled 'store.'
Buyers will often compare the produce at several stalls before deciding to purchase, jotting notes on pieces of papers as they go along. It's these prices that will ultimately determine the price consumers pay for that bushel of asparagus. Today, the price for 28 pounds ranges from $35 to $55, with organic on the pricier end.
The OFT opened here in 1954 in response to local farmers' outcry - they needed to have a place to sell their produce on a wholesale basis, not just on the side streets surrounding St. Lawrence Market. According to Nicholas, the St. Lawrence in the '40s was a "dilapidated old warehouse." The city also wanted the market out of the area in order to develop the downtown for housing and commercial business. The government's response was to purchase the current lot and form the OFT board under the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, creating a city farmer's market where individual farms could set up shop. Today, the terminal has grown to be the third largest food market in North America (excluding Mexico), and has been a pioneer in more ways than one.
"We did recycling before anyone thought of recycling," said Nicholas. Everything from crates to produce is reused in some way - fruit and vegetable scraps often go back the farms as compost or for feeding.
The OFT receives no government funding, and is fully self-sufficient. One million dollars in annual profit is poured back into running and operating the facility. The seven-member board has a mission to keep rental prices low and accessible to the 'little guys.'
"All these people are independent Ontario farmers and greenhouse operators selling to independent retailers - without a place like this, where are the independents going to get their supply?" asks Nicholas.
To him, the answer is obvious.
"You don't want the chain stores to dominate the food like the gas people dominate the gas."
It's what has allowed startups like Ralph Ranjit of Holl-Mar greenhouses from Bradford, Ont. to enter the market.
"I went to university for business and I spent one summer working in an office in a little cubicle with no window...I said, 'forget it,'" said Ranjit. He started with what was easiest and cheapest - a greenhouse to sell starter plants.
But that doesn't mean the OFT is without its big name vendors and buyers. Chiovitti Banana Co. Ltd. sells here, as does Fresh Taste Produce Ltd., the vendor with exclusive rights to Maroc Clementines. It's brought many a celebrity down to pay homage to the terminal.
"Once a year they drag one of the (Moroccan]) Crown Princes in, take him out and he walks around and looks at it," said Nicholas.
Chain stores like Loblaws only buy here to supplement a shortage from their direct growers, but big-name independent stores like Longo's still come here to stock up.
The plant has no plans of moving or expanding much beyond its current location.
"Even though they're building these condos all over the bloody place, every time somebody looks at me and says 'Aren't you going to sell this?' I say 'No, we're not selling this.'"
According to Nicholas, the operation is a well-oiled machine that practically runs itself and serves its purpose well.
"We're in the ideal location - it serves Toronto. You wouldn't have the guy in the corner of Queen and Main Street coming down to buy fresh fruits and veggies if he had to go to Milton or Vaughan."