Fresh Cut Magazine

Chaining Chain Restaurants

After nearly two years of legal maneuvering, a regulation took effect in late April in New York City requiring restaurant chains to display the nutrition information of every menu item along with the price. The new regulation will affect chains with 15 or more stores – about 2,000 of the city’s 23,000 restaurants. The Board of Health specifically targeted chains with this regulation because “chain restaurants serve food that has been clearly associated with excess calories and obesity, and studies show that people who eat fast food regularly consume more calories than those who do not,” according to the department. Giving customers nutrition information in a different format will help them make more healthful choices, which will reduce the number of obese people by 150,000 in the next five years and prevent more than 30,000 cases of diabetes, according to the Board of Health. But the…  » Read more

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Duda Farm Fresh moves into new fresh-cut facility

Duda Farm Fresh Foods has been growing, packing and shipping celery for more than 80 years, but as the demands of retail customers changed, the company branched out into fresh-cut celery products with them. “Convenience is king,” said Greg Tirado, plant manager of Duda’s new processing facility in Oxnard, Calif. The new plant Tirado manages opened March 24, but it’s been in the works for a few years. Tirado accepted the job as plant manager two years ago, after hearing about plans for the new facility and getting excited about building a fresh-cut operation from the ground up. Duda Farm Fresh Foods, a subsidiary of DUDA, operates facilities in California, Florida, Texas, Arizona and Michigan. The new California plant consolidates all of Duda’s southern California operations into one facility. The new plant was built in partnership with Western Precooling Systems Inc., which handles the storage and cooling…  » Read more

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Local Produce is More Than a Fad

Everywhere I turn, there is mention of local produce. My grocery store touts its local grower heritage, and many upscale restaurants provide mouth-watering menus featuring seasonal local produce. Not only can you buy their products any time, you can read about them in newspapers and see them on the local television news. There’s no doubt about it: Local is hot. This may not be a fad. It has all the promise of a developing trend that could become a normal way of doing business, just as is sourcing from China. But is the industry ready to accommodate the demand? Are the growers ready to match the needs of buyers? If your customers are asking for local produce, there is one area – food safety – that has not received much consideration. Launching a local grower program has all the requisite challenges of any new commodity program –…  » Read more

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Import alert leads to fresh, fresh-cut product recalls

On March 22, FDA issued a rarely used import alert on Honduran-grown cantaloupe that the agency believed was contaminated with Salmonella litchfield, an uncommon strain of S. enterica. In early January, cases of salmonelosis began to appear and continued through mid-March, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Over the course of those three months, CDC identified 58 illnesses in 16 states and Canada, most of those occurring on the West Coast – 10 in California, 10 in Washington and 5 in Oregon. Based on the traceback and interviews with those sickened by the strain of salmonella, CDC identified melons as the contaminated agent – specifically those grown by the Honduran company Agropecuaria Montelibano. FDA responded to the outbreak by issuing the import alert, stopping the shipment of Honduran-grown cantaloupes into the United States. However, the import alert was issued nearly…  » Read more

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Third Coast Produce brings fresh-cut line in-house

The coastal area of Texas is America’s “third coast,” and like the East Coast and the West Coast it makes huge contributions to the economy with its climate, beaches and ports. Houston’s Third Coast Produce takes its name from its geography, and the company only serves customers in the Houston metropolitan area. Third Coast has been in business since 1992, when company founders George Finch, Art Bueno and Dennis Honeycutt decided to start a produce distributing company that could provide the quality and service customers were demanding. The three friends bought a delivery van – a 12-year-old gold, shag-carpet covered truck they nicknamed “Goldie” – and Third Coast Produce was up and running. The gold van went on to rack up 500,000 miles delivering produce, and still lives on in company lore. Third Coast services the Houston area, specializing in delivering the freshest product to foodservice customers…  » Read more

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