Ted Kaplan grew up on Los Angeles’ Seventh Street Market at his family’s wholesale operation in the 1960s and ‘70s. He has seen a lot of changes in those 45-plus years, but he believes the attention to food safety might well be the biggest.

Kaplan is president of Professional Produce, a produce grower-shipper, distributor and re-packer located a few miles from the Los Angeles wholesale produce scene.

About 40 years ago, he was pushing a hand truck on that decades-old street-level market, which, even by that time, had seen much better days in its past.

Silvia Presutto, Rosie Pineda, Alexander Ersoff, Diana O’Connor, Harry Varteresian, Milt Kaplan, Ted Kaplan, Michael Gaskins, Richard JimenezToday, produce is sold in a much more pristine environment. “I think that is the biggest change and has impacted us the most,” he told The Produce News  in mid-June. “We have SQF Level 2 food-safety certification, which is something you have to have. Food safety is very important and has changed the way we do things.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is that Ted Kaplan is still working alongside his father, the 91-year-old Milt Kaplan. A longtime Los Angeles wholesaler, Milt still comes into the warehouse every day via Uber transportation and continues to work the phone as he has for many decades.

The younger Kaplan said Professional Produce, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, has a diversified business including growing and shipping Mexican vegetables, wholesaling and distributing a varied line of fresh produce, and repacking citrus for many different customers. He said the citrus repacking equipment allows the firm to do a fair amount of private label repacking at its Los Angeles area facility.

Though the family’s original firm concentrated its effort as a terminal market operator selling to the local vendors, as was the norm for the day, Professional Produce sells all over the United States and into the export market including into Asia and Europe.

Kaplan said business has been very good but that the West Coast drought is impacting the company’s supplies and operations in both California and Mexico. Without rain, he said the problems will multiply next year.

While the improving economy has meant more business the last few years, Kaplan said rising costs “have made it a lot tougher now than it used to be.”

He said costs have gone up all along the supply chain from the grower through the distributors and on to the retail shelf. The costs have to be passed on to the consumer and Kaplan said “they are having trouble keeping up.”