The New York Produce Show is like old home week to officials at D’Arrigo New York. Roll out the red carpet, set up the booth, invite everyone over and let the good times roll. 

“This is our backyard, and we want to create an environment where everyone is happy to visit our booth and learn all about our company, what we do, how we do it and where we do it,” said Gabriela D’Arrigo, the Hunts Point-based wholesaler’s vice president of marketing and communications. “We want to invite everyone over to our booth and it is like we host them for our own Super Bowl party, where they learn how we do business and what it takes to be successful operating in New York City and the tri-state area.

“We have a number of goals. One is to educate the industry about how we operate. Another is to get leads for new customers and also to get feedback from our customers some of whom we rarely get to see outside of an event like this.”

The D’Arrigo booth will be front-and-center again on the show floor. D’Arrigo said it is convenient located next to Central Perk, the popular break area, and features four booths, creating a large area for D’Arrigo New York employees plus people from sister companies based in California and Boston. “You get to see everyone,” she said.

D’Arrigo New York will also conduct a silent online auction at the booth with proceeds going to Brighter Bites, a non-profit the company supports that is focused on providing healthy food at schools and offering nutritional information to the students and their families. 

D’Arrigo said that showcasing everything that is New York City is also part of the company’s agenda during the show. The fact that the event takes place in midtown Manhattan during the festive Christmas season attracts many attendees who would otherwise not get a chance to visit the city. 

“We want to play the role of being a great host,” D’Arrigo noted. “We think this is a great opportunity to showcase ourselves and what we do as well as the city that we call home, especially during the holiday season. We do not have booths at the national shows since we want to focus on the regional shows and our customer base in the northeast. We want them to get the entire New York experience.”

That experience includes dinners with clients in New York during the show and a tour of the Hunts Point market in The Bronx, where they can visit a number of wholesalers and come to the D’Arrigo home base to get a better idea of how the company operates in the complex New York metropolitan market, which is home to nearly 23 million people.

“While Hunts Points is a very large market, a lot of people are still unfamiliar with it and what goes on there,” D’Arrigo said. “The opportunity to visit the market allows us to give show attendees a glimpse of what goes on there, its history, objectives and an inside perspective.”

It also allows customers to gain a better understanding of the complex, multicultural and rapidly changing New York metropolitan area. “This is what we do regularly, and it is not a simple place to do business,” D’Arrigo added. “We can offer a look into how hard it is to operate here and also let them see the real cultural melting pot and how it can and does change so quickly.

“We have shippers who have never visited us before and now they come and tell us they had no idea how complex this is.  When they see it and see the volume of product that comes through and how we get the job done, we think they gain a much better appreciation of what we do.”