The Atlanta State Farmers Market is perfectly positioned to serve Southeastern states from the center of the South. The Nickey Gregory Co. is headquartered there for that exact reason.

“I’ve spent the majority of my life on the Atlanta market,” said company founder and President Nickey Gregory, who launched the business in 2000 after working his way up the ranks elsewhere. “This market is the hub of the Southeast produce business. Think of how many areas you can reach overnight — or tonight. If you leave Atlanta at 4 p.m. you can be to Raleigh, Charleston, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, Mobile, Jackson, Nashville, Louisville and Cincinnati. That is one of the great pluses for Atlanta. It’s not always, ‘What’s the price?’ It’s, ‘Can you be there tomorrow morning?’ We are the UPS and the Fed Ex of the produce business in the Southeast. We are the guys that are there the next morning when you need it.”

Atlanta’s Nickey Gregory Co. carries more than 350 items, many offered under its own ‘Cheryl’s Best’ brand, with overnight delivery in the Southeast. The company also has operations in Miami and a tomato repack facility in College Park, GA. (Photo by Chip Carter)The Nickey Gregory Co. stocks over 350 fresh produce items daily — many packaged under its own “Cheryl’s Best” label — sourced from local farmers and around the world. Not only is the company a full-line distributor, it also controls its own logistics with a fleet of refrigerated trailers delivering within a 750 mile radius of the 75,000-square-foot location in Atlanta, a 20,000-square-foot tomato warehouse and the 25,000-square-foot operation in Miami, all Primus Superior certified. The company also offers a cross-dock operation, storage, logistics and retail support with direct store delivery.

Over the last three years, Gregory’s repack operation has boomed. The addition of new flow pack lines — most recently a state-of-the-art corn wrapping machine — has increased capacity to be able to handle any retail, foodservice or private label need.

“Demand has increased so much we knew we needed to be able to take care of any client for any need,” he said. “We did shrink wrap years ago and I wasn’t crazy about it. I didn’t like the way it bruised the produce — you put such pressure to it to make the bags seal and look right,” Gregory said. “But the flow wrap process, Europe was doing it — like always — five years before us, so we decided to try it. It gives a better presentation and better shelf life to the product because it’s real easy on the product.

“Since it’s hard to find people to do work like overwrapping manually in a store, we felt like there was a market out there for it to be done on a big-scale, automated basis. We’re proud of it and of course it helps us promote our own ‘Cheryl’s Best’ label a little more.”

That label is symbolic of the pride Gregory and his staff of over 150 bring to their work.

“From Miami to Atlanta we have an extraordinary group of people — from accounting to transportation — who will do whatever it takes and give their best to make the Nickey Gregory Co. look good and be on time with good products.”