“Growth was really the throughline for our business this past year at Ben B.,” said Bill Loupée, chief operating officer at the company. “We expanded our capabilities, launching our proprietary ERP platform Ben B. Access; we expanded our distribution radius to North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri; we expanded our sales staff to accommodate our growth; and we expanded our services, with our repacking and white-labelling offerings.”

All of these things work in harmony to make the company a better partner for its customers, helping it deliver what they need, however they need it, wherever they are.

“Our additions to staff and services were both reactive and proactive,” Loupée said. “We already saw the demand coming in from current and prospective customers and knew we needed to capitalize on the opportunities we were seeing. In business, we try not to overextend ourselves before the need is there, but we also always want to make sure we have resources available to satisfy any spike in business. Expanding our staff and service areas when and how we did allow us to do just that.”

As a result, Ben B. has been able to strategically align with customers by region so it could build lane density into those areas. With that in place, it now can service new delivery points and give customers the level of service they expect.

Like most companies in the fresh produce industry, the ever-changing policy around tariffs presented new challenges for Ben B. this year, particularly the uncertainty and lack of lead time which impacts sourcing, logistics, labor and packaging costs. 

“However, having a strong grower network, making well-informed order decisions and staying in tune to the latest developments prevented us from experiencing too much disruption,” Loupée said. “One of the reasons we were able to adapt to these fluctuations is because of what we practice every year—having open, transparent communication with our customers to understand their pain points, so we can figure out how to best support them.”

Value-added services and sustainable packaging have been areas the company concentrated on in 2025.

“Customers are trying to eliminate unnecessary workstreams, consolidate vendors or both,” Loupée said. “That’s why value-add services have become so popular. A foodservice group doesn’t want to take the produce a distributor sells to them to another vendor to re-bag or cut for example. They’re looking for cost savings and efficiency, and ultimately partners who can do it all to streamline the process.”

Sustainability has played into this as well. 

“Some customers, such as those in Canada, have strict regulations around plastic use,” Loupée said. “When you offer services, you need to consider all of the things that will influence their purchasing decisions. It’s not only about what you can do for them, but how you do it as well.”

With a network of more than 300 growers, Ben B.’s sourcing strategy continues to successful evolve.

“We have deep relationships with our growers, which span across the world,” Loupée said. “It’s what allows us to compete on price and source anything, anytime, even if certain crops or regions are devastated by unforeseen circumstances. With tariffs putting strain on international imports, we’ve leaned into our Michigan Grower program and strengthened connections with local and regional growers that we can source from quickly right from our own backyard. We’ve also increased our citrus imports to support bagging line operations.”

Looking ahead to 2026, the company plans to increase its brand recognition and distribution footprint to new areas throughout the country.  

“We know demographics are shifting and there is demand for high-quality fruits and vegetables in places where it didn’t exist before, and we want customers to look to Ben B. to make that a reality,” Loupée said.