City Produce, one of the oldest wholesale distributors of fresh fruits and vegetables in Seattle, opened in 1926 at Pike Place Market by Shosaku Suyama. Since 1962, the longtime family business has called the Chinatown International District (CID) its home. City Produce will be recognized as this year’s Community Voice Awards honoree for ‘Leadership in Business.’ Prior to the event, the International Examiner sat down with City Produce co-owner Mark Hidaka to discuss the company’s history and impact, how to sustain a historic legacy business in hard times, and its role in the CID neighborhood. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
International Examiner: In your own words, would you describe what City Produce does?
Mark Hidaka: We started in 1926 and we’ve been in the Chinatown International District (CID) for almost the entirety of its existence. Prior to our location on 7th Avenue, we were located by Bailey Gatzert Elementary on Lane Street. My partner Steve Suyama’s family, his grandfather, started the business and started doing small deliveries in the Pike Place Market area. It’s a family business, a family-run business. I’m not a family member, but my parents were good friends with the Suyamas, so we’ve all been lifelong friends.
Basically, we’re just a wholesale fresh fruit and produce distributor. We mainly deliver mostly to restaurants, along with some institutions like nursing homes, preschools, and those things. Prior to 2000, we used to have a small retail section, too, where we served the community. We’d sell, you know, fresh fruit and produce, and some other staples.
IE: How did you become involved with City Produce since you’re not part of the Suyama family?
MH: I was a real close family friend and after college, I started helping out doing some things and just joined the business that way. I’ve known the Suyamas my whole life. I started doing deliveries, then I started doing the buying, and then I became a partner. I enjoyed not having to be at a desk, the fact that I could get outside and keep real active. I also really liked being in the International District, which was the area that I grew up in. My father owned a hardware store in the neighborhood, so it was like home.
IE: City Produce first specialized in supplying Japanese and Chinese restaurants. Was there a gap in the market for Asian fruits and vegetables?
MH: We used to service a lot of the Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the beginning, and then we started migrating to other cuisines as other Asian groups started coming in, like Vietnamese and then Thai. We also do smaller restaurants that want high quality, real different vegetables sourced out. Initially, those restaurants were just our community. We were making mostly local deliveries in the International District, and then as the community started to branch out, we made deliveries by truck. Now, we have a fleet. We go as far north as Marysville and as far south as Tacoma.
IE: When you came on board, you brought new ideas for how to grow the clientele and upgrade the company’s technology in particular. Can you say more about that?
MH: I knew that in order to survive in our economy, we needed to keep up and we needed to invest in technology as we were to find new buying sources, looking at the communities as far as their needs, too. I was doing a lot of sourcing for buying sources, different vegetables, and where to source different things that weren’t really available in the Seattle area at that time. That meant doing a lot more business in Los Angeles and Hawaii, even more international type business. At one point there was a real high influx of Vietnamese and Southeast Asians, and at that time, there were not as many sources and purveyors of those types of vegetables. It was later on that the Vietnamese and the Cambodians started to do a lot of growing themselves.
IE: It’s interesting that your business evolved with the changing populations.
MH: Right, exactly. The Vietnamese use a lot of basil and cilantro, so there’s just a whole bevy of Southeast Asian vegetables that aren’t used as much in Chinese and definitely not Japanese cooking. I think our ability to see that change and to react to it allowed us to continue to do business. Many second and third generation small businesses aren’t able to survive because I think they’re not open to change. They’re kind of stuck in their own ways of doing things. The ability to remain flexible and be open to change is critical to survival.
IE: One unique part of your business, too, is that it does not operate with a sales force. How have you managed that?
MH: Correct. We don’t have salespeople who go out and make cold calls on customers. Most of our business comes to us in the sense that we’ve supported a lot of businesses that have workers who branch out and open their own businesses as a result, and they come to us next. It’s basically good will and services that have allowed us to survive, which is pretty crazy when you think about today’s climate. But at the same time, sometimes it’s more effective, right? I mean a picture is worth a thousand words and actions speak louder than words. It’s just our ability as a company to service and take care of our customers that’s allowed us to survive and grow.
IE: How much of the company’s longevity do you credit to City Produce being a family business?
MH: When you own a family business, or are a part of a small business, there are a lot of different skill sets. You have to do a lot of things and you have to be real flexible and able to do a little bit of everything. Sometimes you have to do sales, sometimes, you have to make an order, sometimes you have to clean the bathroom. The restaurant business is volatile, I mean there’s always huge turnover in restaurants, always new ones opening and old ones closing. We work with a core of restaurants that are always around, but you have to constantly get new ones in order to survive because a lot of them close or people retire.
We have to really stay on our feet and make sure that our customers are taken care of. The fact that our customers know who we are, they know they can come talk to us, that they won’t get an answering machine when they call, that they’ll talk to a real voice, that makes a big difference. It’s totally based on relationships. We’re reliable. I mean, we never closed all through COVID. That period was especially hard on restaurants, and one thing that it taught us was how important consistent quality and service is. So, we’re committed to our customers as well as our workers, most of whom have been with us 10 to 15 years, which is not normal in our industry.
IE: What would you say is the significance of City Produce’s location in the Chinatown International District?
MH: We’ve always been real supportive of the community, although we’re kind of a quiet company. We don’t believe in having to be on the front page of everything. I mean, we’d rather take care of business and let our actions speak stronger than our words, and you know, people know we were there. We used to supply a lot of the community with produce when there was only Uwajimaya and us, but times change, so we support mostly restaurants now as well as ACRS’ Chinatown International District Food Bank every week. We also deliver to Nikkei Manor and Kin On. We’ve been located in the same place for a long time. Everybody knows where they can come if they need to get anything. We still let people come in on a will call basis.
IE: Is there a younger generation that might take over the business?
MH: There are some younger people involved. We’re kind of not quite sure how they see themselves going forward, but there are definitely people who’ve been with the business for a long time who are interested in keeping it going, so that’s exciting. It’s a real good business.
This year’s Community Voice Awards benefit dinner will be at Ding Feng Restaurant on Sept. 27, 2024 at 6 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online: givebutter.com/fkO6ZI
