After a 46-year career in the produce industry, Jack Bertagna has called it quits — or almost.

“I’m not a consultant,” he claimed. “Everyone quits and says they are a consultant. I’m not doing that. I have just got a couple of potato guys I’m working with and I’m trying to find them some accounts. When I do, I’m turning them over to them and I’m done.”Jack Bretagna and his wife, Patti.

These two potato guys, as Bertagna refers to them, knew he was retiring and called. In a nutshell that defines how this Cincinnati native ended up with such a diversified produce career. He just kept answering his phone and moving from one challenge to the next.

When it was all over, he had spent 20 of those 46 years with companies affiliated with Bob Castellini and another 17 with the Kroger Co.

Gordon Foodservice was another significant employer, and Bertagna was instrumental in starting up Markon and in developing divisions for Sysco and U.S. Foodservice.

Bertagna, who began his official retirement on Jan. 1, said he had “no regrets” concerning his produce career and the many turns it took.

“I was very fortunate to work much of my career with great gentleman, especially Bob Gordon and Bob Castellini. They both had a huge impact on my life.”

The Bertagna story begins in Ohio, where he has also chosen to retire to be close to his kids and grandkids.

“I was born and raised in Cincinnati,” he said. “I was going to night school at University of Cincinnati when I was hired by Kroger in May of 1968. My first job was bagging rotten potatoes. I’ll never forget that.”

It didn’t take him long to “fall in love with the produce industry” and determine that this was going to be his career. “I can say with complete honesty that in my 46 years in this industry there has never been a day that was the same as the day before.”

Bertagna was quickly promoted to produce manager and within a couple of years “they made me produce manager of their premier store [in Cincinnati]. It was #355 in Hyde Park. I had 28 people working under me.”

Soon thereafter, Bertagna was in the company’s management training program and then moved up the ranks. After serving as a produce buyer for a couple of years, he landed in the assistant produce merchandiser spot and then produce merchandiser.  

In 1984, after 17 years with Kroger, he got a call out of the blue from Paul Gordon, who was the top executive of the family-owned-and-operated Gordon Food Service in Grand Rapids, MI. Over the next three weekends, Paul Gordon wooed Bertagna until the younger man agreed to join the firm.

“On that third weekend as we were talking he was sitting on the floor in his living room playing Monopoly with my kids,” he said. “That convinced me.”

Bertagna was named produce director for Gordon Food Service but at first it wasn’t a huge job.

“I’d say we were doing about 10 percent of the produce buying that I was doing at Kroger,” he said.

But it wasn’t too much later when Gordon got the idea that a produce-buying operation should be formed for several different large broad line foodservice distributors.

“Paul brought a bunch of people together in Denver over several months to talk about it,” he said.

Bertagna said the discussions were fragmented and not getting too far when one of the participants decided it was time to put up or shut up. “That was the start of Markon,” he said. “Our first hire was Dave Eldredge and our second was Tim York, who is doing a great job of running the company today.”

Bertagna stayed with Gordon Food Service through Paul Gordon’s retirement, but then he once again answered the phone. This time Sysco was calling and asked him to establish a produce-buying operation for that foodservice operation in Los Angeles.

The Bertagnas moved to Los Angeles and he proceeded to set up the new division.

“Four hundred salesman had to be trained,” said Bertagna. “Every Friday morning I took 60 of them to the Los Angeles produce market and we would walk the market. We started from scratch but built up a pretty good operation.”

In 1991, Bob Castellini called and Bertagna moved back to Ohio and established what would eventually become Crosset of Akron. His next opportunity had him in Salinas, CA, opening up a foodservice buying division for U.S. Foodservice.

“What was neat about that job is they knew nothing about produce and told me to do whatever it takes to start up the business,” he said. “Within 90 days, we had the operation up and running.”

Bertagna stayed with U.S. Foodservice through most of the 1990s, and then joined Castellini again at the end of the decade. In rejoining the firm, he was told to look around and see what they needed in the produce arena. After about three or four weeks on the job, Bertagna noticed the firm’s potato bagging business was lacking, and started up a division to change that.

The company began bagging colored potatoes and Bertagna established a branding campaign with NASCAR that proved to be very successful, and one that he said pre-dated the many branding campaigns that exist today with Disney, Sesame Street and other popular brand tie-ins.

“I feel like I won the Lottery,” is how Bertagna describes his career, adding that he was associated with great people and loved the work he did.

As he looks back on his long career, Bertagna believes the industry is losing some of its personality. “The business is changing. Everything is electronic.”

He also bemoans the lack of training that takes place. He spent a good deal of his career opening new divisions and training people about the fast-paced world of fresh produce. Today he said buyers look at screens and fill orders without having had proper training.

“They don’t understand produce like I did,” he said with the confidence of a man who has spent the past half-century in the business.