Among the many professional services The Ruby Company brings to the fresh produce industry, the Chicago-based company is expanding its footprint and geographic reach with a new office opening in Troy, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. “We’re hoping to start servicing the regional distributors, wholesalers, and re-packers,” said Josh Wolff, Co-Partner and Director of Growth & Strategy at The Ruby Company.

Ruby was largely focused on servicing retail systems and terminal markets in the early days. The business has since evolved to servicing a wide variety of segments with various commodity offerings.

As the years went, their business expanded. “We now service over 500 commercial purchasers across the country, a good majority are still retailers, but an ever growing portion of that is in foodservice,” said Wolff. “We work with national chains to set very aggressive and favorable delivery programs into either legacy distribution models or customize distribution models.”

Wolff noted, Ruby services a lot of renown national chain restaurants. “It’s incredible that we’ve been able to build up to where we are today, servicing many of the top world renowned chains.”

“Terminal markets, fresh produce processing facilities, wholesalers, re-packers –– you name it, we work with them,” said Wolff. Ruby also services large scale manufactures, companies taking fresh produce like potatoes, onions, and sweet potatoes, and processing them into frozen meals for the retail space.

“Our bread and butter still today is potatoes and onions –– which makes up the vast majority of our total volume,” said Wolff, but the last decade Ruby has expanded into new commodity offerings, investing in resources and people.

Ruby’s growth has come in a few notable ways, Wolff said, “namely, in expanding our teams.” Wolff noted hiring the right expertise to help support new commodity categories, along with the centrality of establishing new relationships with Ruby’s grower-shipper base. Wolff said, “many of our growers have been with us for decades. These are mutually beneficial partnerships with the shared goal of growing together.”

If you’re wondering if Ruby is in logistics, the answer is emphatically, yes. Wolff said, “We are moving over 400 full truckloads of fresh produce every week.” He explained that volume served as a sort of launching pad, “and we started a freight brokerage that goes by the name of Deploy Solutions Group. Headquartered also in Chicago, Deploy launched in 2019, started as a way to support Ruby’s core business. “Deploy has really started to flourish, carving their own path, and today service a wide range of shippers across the country, in different verticals, with fresh produce growers being a large portion,” said Wolff.

Speaking to trends within the industry, Wolff highlighted the continued move towards private label. Wolff said, “It seems like a growing trend for retail concepts, both small and large, is to build a label they are proud of and that we are proud to pack.” He added, “We love those projects, they’re challenging and we find that the close process further solidifies the relationship and partnership with those retail concepts.”

Wolff elaborated on his point, “as a business, we’re not looking for transactional relationships, that are here today and gone tomorrow, we are in the business of trying to grow, cultivate, and develop long standing relationships.” Wolff spoke to a tendency he sees within the industry, and Ruby’s proposition to counter it, “It means we’re not always the cheapest ones out there, but what we do is add service and value all across the supply chain,” said Wolff.

The new office is one such example derived from that company ethos. Having seen exponential growth over the last five years, Ruby has expanded into new markets, segments, and commodities, but Wolff said a huge part of their expansion into Michigan is a direct result of bringing in the right people. Wolff said, “We’ve made some key hires to build out that office, and with many of our team already having personal ties to Michigan, everyone is really excited!” Leading the Michigan Office is David Cohen, Ruby President and CEO. “Together we are building out a dynamic team who will be instrumental in the success of this new venture,” said Wolff.

One key focus Wolff sees for the new office is establishing direct lines of relationship with Michigan grower-shippers. “There’s a lot of fresh product coming out of Michigan, so we’re excited to have a new regional footprint and see what continued expansion looks like over the coming years,” said Wolff.

Asked about the move to build out an in-person office, particularly with a felt trend within the industry to accommodate remote work over the last few years, Wolff said, “We want to be a progressive company, where we are providing employees with plenty of opportunity to define their work-life balance. We found that Covid was a testament to us that we can do our jobs remotely, do we like it, some yes and some no, but what we found is if you have the right people in the right seats it really doesn’t matter!”

“Honestly a lot of us have missed that in-person camaraderie and that team building environment, so there’s a strategy and direction to try and bring people into the office,” said Wolff.

It’s a fine line, but as Wolff explained,  it’s not an issue to lose people over. “During Covid we had quite a few key staff members decide that Chicago wasn’t working them anymore –– they were wanting to move to Portland, or North Carolina, or wherever, and what we decided was we weren’t ready lose these people just because they’re operating out of a different state.” Having that balance is important to Ruby. “So the business has obviously evolved to meet that need, and at the same time we love having people back together in the office.”

The Ruby Company launched the new space, with a retreat for their sales and operational staff. “We brought everyone from our Chicago staff to Michigan and celebrated the new office –– it was a fun way to get our people together and set an important direction for Ruby,” said Wolff.