SAN FRANCISCO — GrubMarket announced it has completed the acquisition of Vineland, New Jersey-based Regatta Tropicals, a successful and premier fresh fruit company that provides the highest quality fruits to retail, chain stores and food service companies across the U.S. and Canada. Regatta Tropicals also exports fruit to worldwide locations such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and Europe and imports fruit from Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Australia, and Italy, among other countries. Regatta Tropicals currently operates in New Jersey and California, is one of the top suppliers of kiwifruit, persimmons and figs in the U.S., and also provides convenient and sophisticated shipping, repacking and restyling services for its customers.
Founded nearly 30 years ago as an offshoot of a company called Coast-to-Coast Produce, Regatta Tropicals is run by its original owner Steve Matych and his wife Teresa Barnes-Matych. Today, Regatta Tropicals is a full-service produce distribution and wholesale business with freezer and cold storage facilities that cover over 60,000 square feet in space and sophisticated repacking operations in both Vineland, New Jersey and Reedley, California. Across both its West Coast and East Coast operations, Regatta employs nearly 200 people. In addition, Regatta is considered one of the largest volume marketers of Fuyu and Hachiya persimmons in California and also owns 60 acres of land in Maricopa, Arizona, where it grows its famous Black Mission figs. After the acquisition, the business will continue to be managed by its current experienced and mission-driven leadership team.
“We are excited to join the GrubMarket team and welcome the opportunities brought forth by GrubMarket’s robust technology platform and strong eCommerce supply and demand network. We strive to be one of the highest quality and most reliable fresh fruit distributors for our customers nationwide, and we also seek to further tap into premier grower networks on both the East Coast and West Coast. We are thrilled to learn that GrubMarket shares this same goal and has built such a well-integrated and much-needed eCommerce and technology-enabled platform to bring fresh food to so many important customers across the country. We sincerely look forward to joining the GrubMarket team and bringing more high quality fresh fruit to GrubMarket’s end customers,” said Steve Matych, CEO of Regatta Tropicals.
According to Mike Xu, CEO of GrubMarket: “Regatta Tropicals is a highly respected brand in the fresh produce space for persimmons, figs, pomegranates, peaches, kiwi, cherries, apples and grapes. Steve and the exceptional team at Regatta Tropicals have scaled the company to tens of millions in annual revenues and have built a strong, defensible business through their repacking and marketing capabilities. In addition, they are mission driven with strong clean label packing and sustainability practices, which matches GrubMarket’s goals and missions. This acquisition enables GrubMarket to further strengthen our presence in key markets along both the East and West Coasts, while solidifying our position in the food supply chain industry as a technology-enabler for B2B food players. We are excited to welcome the Regatta Tropicals team to the GrubMarket family.”
As a part of GrubMarket’s portfolio, Regatta Tropicals will now utilize GrubMarket’s innovative and proprietary WholesaleWare software suite, the company’s software-as-a-service platform that provides food industry wholesalers and distributors with seamless financial management, easy-to-use mobile and online ordering features, precise inventory management, lot traceability and tracking, grower accounting, and automated routing and logistics tools.
About GrubMarket
Founded in 2014, GrubMarket is a San Francisco-based food technology company operating in the space of food supply chain eCommerce for both business customers and end consumers, as well as providing related software-as-a-service solutions to digitally transform the American and global food supply chain. Currently, GrubMarket operates in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and British Columbia (Canada), with plans to expand to the rest of the U.S., Canada, and other parts of the world.
