GROCER’S DELIGHT

Jetro Helps Keep Stores In Business­­

All sorts of merchandise typically found in small grocery stores throughout Queens — and half the United States — can be found lining the shelves of the mammoth Jetro Cash & Carry locations.

By Lee Landor

Outside, a large sign sits atop a plain, brown building, only moderate in size. It is simple and modest at first glance, but once the doors open, mountains of colors and boxes flood the floor. Orange carts dart across the wide aisles, as people push them from one row to the next in search of supplies to add to their already heavy loads. Workers and assistants can be found every 10 feet, directing people or unloading and stocking merchandise onto the ceiling-high shelves.

This is the College Point warehouse of Jetro Cash & Carry/Restaurant Depot, a private wholesale supplier of the grocery stores and restaurants that perpetuate Queens’ multi-ethnic culinary culture. Each of the two distinct wholesalers, owned by the same company and operated separately, cater to one bracket of foodservice businesses: Jetro to grocery stores and Restaurant Depot to restaurants and catering halls.

More than 11,000 products, ranging from rubber garbage cans and laundry detergent to Tootsie Roll Pops and soda, line the shelves of each of Jetro’s 10 warehouses across the country, from Queens to Los Angeles. At all 47 Restaurant Depot locations – which are spread throughout the Northeast, Mid-West and South – tableware, food and a wide-range of other merchandise is available in hefty quantities seven days a week.

The chain stocks up on commodities for foodservice businesses in stores so large, they require maps, aisle directories and multi-lingual staff for navigation. With so much to choose from, it comes as no surprise that customers must often ask for directions. But it’s a small price to pay for having access to thousands of products and the ability to buy them in bulk.

Business Ease

The Jetro/Restaurant Depot members are familiar with the shopping routine: enter the warehouse, scan the company membership card, grab a huge, heavy shopping cart and begin the trek down the long, wide, tall aisles. Along the way they can pick up supplies from glassware and mixing bowls to frozen duck and gourmet foods. And, when they finally reach the cash register, they might be pleasantly surprised by the low figure flashing across the screen.

But the cost isn’t the only reason the company serves up to 3,000 customers a week at each of its 57 locations.

“I think we play a major role in keeping the small, independent grocery stores in the inner cities of New York functioning,” said CEO Stanley Fleishman. “I think if we didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have all these little stores on the corners of Brooklyn and the Bronx and Queens because it’s really tough for a small retail store to buy products.”

 

Fleishman, who joined Jetro in 1987, served as Chief Financial Officer and then took over as Chief Executive Officer in 1992, explained the difficulties small business owners face when trying to buy merchandise.

“Traditional large wholesalers…will only deliver large quantities and…they don’t allow their truck drivers to collect cash, so you have to be eligible for credit,” he said. “And it’s tough for a small business to take large deliveries and to qualify for credit.”

So it’s the “Cash & Carry” part of Jetro/Restaurant Depot that draws in the customers. But Fleishman and the company’s nearly 2,000 employees do more than just provide goods for local merchants; they also appreciate their efforts.

“Small businesses are like the blood of any town, village, city, country,” Fleishman said, “and we are very involved with that small business sector, and it’s exciting and it’s critical to the city.”

Understanding this, Jetro/Restaurant Depot recognizes that “Most of the people are very hardworking – and working 24 hours a day sometimes…in a small store with very little respect or support from the city,” according to Fleishman. “We have to treat people well to keep them coming back here.”

Deputy Borough President Karen Koslowitz and Councilman Eric Gioia (r.) join Stanley Fleishman in cutting the ribbon at the new Maspeth Restaurant Depot site.

Quick Growth

The company, which was founded in 1976 by private investors, started out slowly, opening only 10 locations in 20 years. But after buying up then-4-year-old Elmhurst-based Restaurant Depot in 1994, the company expanded, growing and flourishing throughout New York and the rest of the country. In the next 20 years, the company opened another 47 locations.

Fleishman, a South Africa native who came to the States to earn a business degree from the University of Pennsylvania, said it was endurance and honesty that helped move Jetro/Restaurant Depot forward.

“It’s slow at first, especially slow at first, and then people come around and start trusting you for your product, your price, your quality, your integrity,” he said. “And for the most part, our customers are long, long-term customers and regular customers.”

Luck & Smarts

 

Jetro’s shelves are filled with a wide variety of products.

Though the 55-year-old said he finds the industry “fascinating,” it’s not without its challenges.

“You have to have the patience and the commitment and the team of people around you that will help you execute your strategy,” Fleishman said. “But nothing’s easy.”

Regardless, the Westchester resident said he considers himself lucky for being involved with the business, “in every possible way.”

One of the pieces of wisdom he shares with his co-workers and encourages them to ask themselves is, “Are you lucky, or are you smart? Or is it a mix of both?”

In his case, it was a little of each. The father of three who dreamed of coming to America since he was a child, of living in “the biggest, the best, the fastest, the most open” country, returned to his South Africa home in the late 1970s after he received his business MBA. Unable to resist, he returned often until he finally joined Jetro and decided to permanently move here. And now he’s enjoying every aspect of his job, including his 30-minute commute each way from his Westchester home.

Most important to Fleishman is that the company still serves a need in the community: without its products and services, the small restaurants, convenience and grocery stores, and drug and hardware stores would perish.

Those stores would be taken over by larger chains, such as 7-11 and other grocery or gas station stores, Fleishman said. “But where you get a Jetro,” he added, “we are able to keep these guys in business.”

And as of 2000, the company served about 50,000 “little guys,” helping them to maintain their costs and profits without stress.

 

Restaurant Depot caters to the food service industry.

Just as Jetro Cash & Carry Enterprises noticed the success of Restaurant Depot Enterprises in 1994 – a time when the business was selling more than 10,000 items from produce to flatware at discounted prices and bringing in more than $100,000 a week, according to fundinguniverse.com – it is keeping watch for more opportunities to further expand.

The company’s last New York location was opened in Maspeth in 2005, on a 35-acre lot that was previously a copper smelting plant, and then the Phelps Dodge site, which was sold to the U.S. Postal Service in 1986. Following a $19 million plan to clean up the site in 2003, Restaurant Depot began construction of the first business to open at the former manufacturing location.

Now Jetro/Restaurant Depot is on the lookout to grow again, but this time in a new, spacious, comfortable location in Brooklyn. And, as the $450 million company shops around for such a place, customers can continue their shopping at any of its current locations, which are listed at Jetro.com.