Shoppers at the Hockessin ACME typically have a pretty easy time figuring out which fruits and vegetables were grown locally.
That’s because the smiling faces of farmers are prominently displayed next to the produce their farm sold to the Hockessin store.
Gov. Jack Markell and a collection of First State farmers were on hand on Aug. 12 for a ceremony honoring the grocery chain’s more-than-50-year commitment to local agriculture.
“Getting locally grown items on the shelves of stores this size improves the health of our economy,” Markell said. “Our farmers’ fresh produce in turn, improves the health of these stores’ customers.”
About 25 percent of the produce sold at the 12 ACME stores in Delaware is grown by local farmers, said Jay Schneider, ACME produce category manager.
Those fruits and vegetables come from 50 farmers in the tri-state region (ACME has stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, too), he said, and the company deals directly with between five and eight Delaware farmers each week.
Many of those farmers bring their crops directly to the store where the produce is sold, he said, while others send their crops to an ACME warehouse for distribution at any of the company’s 123 stores.
“Customers want local produce right now,” he said. “They like that feel of the farm up the street and they enjoy going to the grocery store and seeing that.”
The local food movement may be trendy right now, but ACME has been promoting local produce since the first store opened in Delaware in 1954, Schneider said. One Delaware farmer, Bob Minner of Houston, has been selling produce to the grocery chain for 40 years.
John Donohue, store manager at the Hockessin ACME, said he’d much rather sell produce grown locally than items shipped from a across the country, many of which are picked before they are ripe.
“It’s a guessing game,” he said. “Sometimes it ripens and sometimes it doesn’t.”
Being able to sell produce directly to ACME gives the farmers an economic advantage, said Travis Hastings of Coastal Growers in Lewes.
If he were to sell his watermelons to a broker, for example, he’d lose out of a slice of the profits.
“It’s great to be able to connect with the people who are buying,” he said. “They can know exactly where their food is coming from.”
For Gary Callaway, of Callaway Farms in Seaford, direct delivery of his sweet corn, cantaloupes and watermelons keeps the produce moving, he said. His 300-acre farm doesn’t have the volume to ship multiple tractor loads to a warehouse, he said.
“We can get the produce into the hands of the consumer quicker when it’s fresher,” he said.
