Superior Sales of Hudsonville, MI, has been around since 1918, but the company has no intention of sitting on its laurels. With operations in six states, Superior is a year-round supplier of premium fruits and vegetables with an eye on the future.

Superior has offices in Hudsonville and Ann Arbor, MI, Salinas and Kingsburg, CA, Walla Walla, WA, San Antonio, TX, Nogales, AZ, and now Atlanta and Norman Park, GA.

Industry veteran Andrew Scott recently came onboard as vice president of sales and marketing. He will operate from Atlanta and will also have an office in Norman Park at J&R Baker Farms, which forged a partnership with Superior earlier this year.

Andrew Scott“We’re very proud to add J&R Baker to our lineup. People have been doing business with them a long time and the Georgia presence is the perfect complement to the rest of our deal,” said Scott, who also serves as president of the Southeast Produce Council. “I’m looking forward to being onsite at the farm to keep an eye on things and be hands-on. But I’ll also be travelling, visiting our current clients and looking for new ones, and there’s no better place to get anywhere east of the Mississippi than from Atlanta. I can get almost anywhere I need to be in two hours or less.”

The J&R Baker Farms product will bolster Superior’s greens deal with top-quality product from November through May, along with corn, cabbage, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers and squash.

Superior also specializes in an ever-expanding variety of vegetables, squashes, ornamentals and fruit, including its own private premium-label grape and citrus line “Molly’s Sun Select,” for retail, wholesale and foodservice.

Superior is “completely dialed in” when it comes to food safety, fully PTI-compliant and GTIN certified, with a near-perfect PrimusGFS score,” Scott said.

“People need to know what we’re doing and know more about us and there’s lot to tell,” Scott said. “Some companies follow the vegetable deal through the Northeast — we follow it through Ohio and Michigan. We have people on the ground in California, Texas, Arizona, Washington and Michigan. Now our Southeastern location pretty much covers the last base.”

For a company that has been around almost a century, Superior does not spend much time focusing on past accomplishments. Credit for that goes to owner Randy Vande Guchte, who bought the operation in 1993. Since then, the product line has been expanded and territory served has increased dramatically.

“Randy is very hands-on, he works from 7 in the morning ‘til 5 in the afternoon or later when needed, talking to customers, dispatching trucks — whatever it takes,” Scott said. “He works it, he pounds the phones and never lets up. I like working with somebody like that.”

Now “It’s time for me to go chase business, talk to customers, shake out some new business and really start building the Superior brand and talking about what goes behind that brand,” Scott said. “What do we bring to the table? It’s time for me to start telling that story.”