Garden Fresh Salad Co. keeping the customer happy

Officials at Garden Fresh Salad Co. just want to keep everyone satisfied — very satisfied.

The Chelsea, MA-based company’s mission statement is simply to work to make every customer and client as happy as they can be. “We are a wholesale processing operation that tries to cater to the customer and make everyone as happy as possible,” said Patrick Burke, one of the senior executives who oversees the company that was formed in 1970. “At the end of day, our goal is to provide our clients what they want, and to do it all while offering them the merchandise at the right price points and with the best possible service.”

Garden Fresh Salad Co. was started by Burke’s father-in-law, Izzy Dalleva, who took over a failing business, essentially in bankruptcy, and quickly made some changes that turned its fortunes around. Growth was steady over the years, with the company focused on building stronger and deeper relationships with its customers. Today, Burke said, Garden Fresh Salad Co. is a thriving business, with more than 75 employees and a host of family members who are deeply involved in the operation, which covers most of New England and goes a bit into Canada.

“I have to add the numbers up, but I think we probably have four kids and in-laws involved in the business and six grandchildren and that will just keep on growing and growing,” Burke said, adding that he has been with the company for about 26 years. “As a wholesale processing business, we process pretty much any type of vegetable that is available on the market. We also concentrate on lettuce, romaine, cabbage, carrots and onions.”

Knowing the customer is extremely important. While Burke stressed that Boston is a compact city, he quickly added that it is still like a mini-New York City, with a large number of demographic and ethnic groups with very different food tastes that must be satisfied.

“One thing that we have learned over the years is that the demands of the market are constantly changing, and we have to be aware of them,” he said. “The demographic of people living in this area is constantly evolving and that presents us with a lot of work. We realize that, and at the end of the day the basics are still there and we have to stick to them.

“Boston has a nice mix of cultures and that is helping to build our business even more,” Burke continued. “It is not something we think about regularly at our company. Frankly, we just go with the flow and get a feel for what direction things are going in.”

Burke realizes that things are changing. He said that Garden Fresh Salad Co. operates in a number of “old school” ways, including emphasizing in-person meetings with accounts and spending a lot of time on the phone with people to maintain and strengthen relationships. “As antiquated as many people think it is, verbal communications between our team and our customers is still the best way to talk to people and build business,” he said. “Yes, of course, texts go back and forth, but we just feel that we develop the best relationships and get the best idea of what our customers need by talking to them over the phone or in person as much as possible.”