The Produce Pair show revived in the podosphere
Produce industry veterans Dan Avakian (Dan The Produce Man) and Mark Ferro (Guido The Gardener) have revived their national radio show The Produce Pair as a podcast. The Produce Pair originally ran on more than 300 stations on the Talk America Radio network, and the Universal Talk Network from 1998 to 2005 as a Saturday morning lifestyle call-in show with guests including but not limited to, experts in the produce industry, cookbook authors, chefs and farmers, in order to promote the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables. Avakian has stated on his website www.dantheproduceman.com, “My message at heart over the years has been to promote the enjoyment of fresh fruit and vegetables before the nutrition with the notion that if people experience the enjoyment first then the nutrition will naturally follow.”
Avakian has relished a varied 44 years in the fresh produce industry and has his own YouTube Channel called Dan The Produce Man. “I started the YouTube Channel over a decade ago to promote produce at my store, Dan’s Fresh Produce, which I sold last year,” he said. “I continue to record videos there and Guido has joined me on some of the recent videos. Over 7 million viewers have engaged in the videos on my channel. I had no idea until my son pointed it out to me, I just made them and posted them, never knowing anything about stats.
“I have also revisited some of our old radio shows and they will be uploaded to the podcast page as part of our Blast from The Past Series,” he continued. “The first upload is an interview The Produce Pair did with Frieda Caplan and the next one to go up is a live recording from the Golden Gate Produce Terminal with chef Paul Prudhomme recorded at Bay Area Herbs & Specialty Produce in 2004. I’ve been ruminating in my mind to bring it back as a podcast for several years now, but the very long hours at the store and my lack of the technical knowledge was something that I mistakenly saw as an obstacle. It was the restless downtime that lockdown forced on our lives along with the generous guidance of my friend Patrick Kelly on the technical side of things that was integral to getting the ball rolling.”
Ferro has spent 35 years as a produce specialist with Whole Foods Markets in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as a few organic produce companies on the Oakland and San Francisco Wholesale Markets. He was also a regular columnist for the Bay Area Newspaper group for 18 years with is column Produce Profile, which ran in a dozen newspapers.
“I love to eat, but most importantly, I love to eat well,” said Ferro. “What has always appealed to me about the world of produce is the variety of shapes, sizes and colors of everything. It’s an art museum in every produce department.”
The podcast is available on many platforms including Anchor/Spotify as well as Audible app.
Photo: Dan Avakian (Dan The Produce Man) and Mark Ferro (Guido The Gardener).
