“The industry seems healthy and we’re seeing significant customer growth, which we take as a signal that chefs are increasingly looking for food that is consistently good quality and aligns to their values,” Crawford said.
The Hunts Point area is Baldor’s home base and has been for decades, with more than 200,000 square feet of warehouse space and 2,000 employees nearby in the Bronx.
“We’re grateful to our community, and we give back through an annual backpack drive for kids and a Thanksgiving meal drive that feeds more than 700 families,” Crawford said. “We work closely with our local police precinct, City Councilman Rafael Salamanca and community organizations like The Point. We recognize that food insecurity is, ironically, especially high in this area that houses the NYC food supply, and so we are proud to support nonprofit partners like Food Bank for New York City and City Harvest with more than 3 million pounds of food donations last year.”
Baldor has 13,000 customers across restaurants, retail, hotel, schools and colleges, corporations, event spaces, and more. It also services 75 percent of Michelin-starred restaurants in the region, which speaks to the standard of the products it sells.
“But we also aim to support any business that sells food, and treat all our customers with the same level of ‘radical hospitality’ — getting them the products they need, when they need them,” Crawford said. “We work closely with our grower-shippers and producers to understand what they are struggling with and what they are having great success with as well. They lean on us to be the leader in communication, and this extends from expected forward volumes aligned to their harvest to how the product is holding up in harvest to explaining to customers why and how to use the products.”
In 2024, the company is expanding its delivery zones to markets adjacent to where it currently does business. That includes parts of Cape Cod, the Maine coast and the Delaware and Maryland shores.
“We’ll also be transitioning to a new warehouse space in Maryland which will increase our capacity and capability in that area,” Crawford said.
As Baldor continues to grow, the company has tried very hard to maintain a small company feel — from the way it treats customers to its agility to innovation.
“We have been practicing for 33 years to bring great food connections to the customers we service,” Crawford said. “Our commitment is to deliver quality ingredients, innovative solutions and seamless experiences that ensure the success of our partners.”
