New dedicated retail and Club Chef facility will help General Produce serve Southeast
New dedicated retail and Club Chef facility will help General Produce serve Southeast
FOREST PARK, GA — Founded over four decades ago, General Produce LLC, now owned by the Castellini Group of Cos., has grown phenomenally. For years, the struggle for space on the Atlanta State Farmers Market, here, has been constant.
Limited by existing boundaries, there has been no room for expansion, despite year-over-year growth. General Produce has taken over as much space as possible — but it still has simply not been enough to accommodate an ever-growing client base. So with the backing of Castellini, which acquired General Produce a year ago, the company just opened a sparkling new 185,000-square-foot facility 15 minutes away from the market to house its retail operations and its Club Chef processing facility for value-added products.
General Produce Executive Vice President Randy Lineberger.“This is long awaited and is really exciting stuff for General Produce,” said Executive Vice President and General Manager Randy Lineberger. “The Castellini purchase has been nothing but positive, we’ve joined forces with the biggest produce company this side of the Mississippi and it’s just really exciting. Space has been really tight here on the market, especially for our retail support — we don’t know how we’ve done it, really, but better times ahead. We have a fabulous facility and opportunities on the horizon.”
That said, General Produce is quite happy with the space it has on the market for its other divisions and has no plans to abandon it. Now, in fact, the company will have some extra space on the market. “We don’t have any permanent plans for what we’ll do with the available space but we’re exploring our options,” Lineberger said. “This place gets the job done, we’re staying and we’ll keep doing what we’ve done.”
General Produce will be celebrating the grand opening of its new facility with a Southern flavored bash at Atlanta’s Hard Rock Café during the Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit expo later this month. It’s not just a party for Lineberger — a lifelong musician, he will be performing with his band Sixty-1 Highway at the Oct. 24 party.
“I’m getting the band back together — I’ve got a couple of buddies who get together every now and then and play a little rock and roll,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “We’re going to have a good time — make sure you’re there.”
