Conscious Choice: Goodness Greeness

March 2005

Goodness Greeness

Rising demand for pesticide-free foods fuels growth of local organic distributorship

by Amanda-Grace Serafin

IT STARTED as a seed of an idea that included 50 farmers. Currently more than 500 farmers are part of the local organic-food distribution network known as Goodness Greeness.

“My parents were produce brokers,” said Bob Scaman, president of Goodness Greeness, who explained that his parents ran the business of the family’s suburban Riverside home.

“The highly perishable nature of the industry is instilled in you as a child — if you’re tired at 5 o’clock, decide you don’t want to work...or it’s Christmas, the strawberries don’t care,” Scaman said.

Scaman and his two brothers, Rick and Rodney, who still live in the western suburb, decided to incorporate a twist in the family business in 1990 when they combined their knowledge of marketing produce with an interest in organics. They found a refrigerated warehouse in the city’s South Side Englewood neighborhood and the organic distributorship was born. Success was almost instantaneous.

Goodness Greeness is now a leading distributor of certified organic produce and dairy products in the upper Midwest. In the Chicago area, you can find the label at mainstream food outlets, including Jewel, Dominick’s, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Cub Foods, North Water Market and Stanley’s Fruit Market on North Avenue.

“Today, [success is] walking into a store to a really beautiful section of organics and seeing how far we have come in the industry, Scaman said. “It’s like having children and now they have grown up. It’s a good feeling.”

Getting Fresh

The biggest challenge is getting the product off the small farms and into major urban areas quickly.

“There are 24 pallets in a truck and to get from the back door of a farm to here is a real challenge. We started so small that we could get a limited number of boxes put on a truck in California and delivered to us in Chicago,” Scaman said.

Produce with a longer shelf life such as carrots, potatoes and apples was the mainstay when distribution began. But as the company grew, the diversity in products also expanded.

“We might be pulling cucumber or zucchini in Florida, apples in Washington, tons of stuff from California, flying in tomatoes from Holland and buying something in Baha, Mexico. It’s a tremendous amount of logistic prowess to get it here and redistribute it,” Scaman said. “When we get an item like strawberries into Chicago we probably have 36 hours to get them in and out to the back door of the stores. We are working at a pretty fevered pace...24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Organics Are High Growth Market

According to the Organic Trade Association’s latest numbers the U.S. organic industry grew 20 percent to reach $10.8 billion in consumer sales in 2003. Organic foods have shown growth rates between 17 to 20 percent since 1997. That compares to 2 to 4 percent annual growth of total U.S. food sales during the same period.

“At the beginning it was really driven by a minority of consumers. A lot of them had allergies and this was the only food choice for them,” Scaman said. “There was also a limited amount of environmentalists who strongly believed in what we were doing...When you use the word organic, people perceive the product as being higher quality...[They] are looking for better food and there is so much concern about food safety from the bottom to the top of the food chain. It’s really driving this market.”

Growth in the market naturally means growth for the farmers, including an Amish group in Ontario, Canada, that sends a weekly truck to Chicago.

“We really don’t know what’s going to be on it,” Scaman said. “It’s like walking in every Thursday for the surprise package. This group has really been great — growing heirloom variety melons, stuff that we wait all year for.... Last year we were waiting for the first delivery on a Thursday morning and the same driver who has been coming here for the last 10 years was outside, but this year he had a tractor-trailer. Instead of five or 10 pallets...we walked outside and there was a truck with 20 pallets full of incredible [heirloom fruits and vegetables].”

You can meet the Scaman brothers at Navy Pier during the March 6 and 7 FamilyFarmed.org event, where they will be manning a booth at the organic expo that they are co-sponsoring.

Get More Info
Goodness Greeness, 5959 S. Lowe Ave., Chicago, IL 60621; 773-224-4411; www.goodnessgreeness.com

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