Growth continues for The Perishable Specialist
Celebrating the 21st year with its custom brokerage company, The Perishable Specialist’s husband-and-wife team of Ann and Frank Ramos keeps churning along.
“Business is still cranking, and asparagus is still one of the main items we clear,” said the always upbeat Frank when interviewed by The Produce News in early September. “As far as business is concerned, 2020 was a tough year because of the pandemic and the terrible impact it had. 2021 was on par with 2019 and it looks like 2022 is going to be better than 2021.”
While ports around the globe and the United States, especially the West Coast, have had issues over the past couple of years, Ramos said there haven’t been major problems in the two Florida ports — the port of Miami and port Everglades — where The Perishable Specialist operates.
“We are blessed to be in south Florida where the vessels come in and get unloaded with few issues. When there is a problem, it is usually caused by a trucker delay and that is an acceptable problem,” he said. “We don’t have the catastrophes that have been reported in other ports.”
He added that when there is an issue, there is an open channel of communications with port officials and the relevant government agencies and the concern gets resolved quickly.
Ramos uses the same wording to brag about his employees: “We are blessed to have a great team that we were able to maintain through the pandemic. We have the same staff and we are growing at the same pace as we did before the pandemic.”
Ramos noted that he went into the custom brokerage business right out of college in 1999, and he and his wife started their own company two years later.
Tim Linden
About Tim Linden | 
Tim Linden grew up in a produce family as both his father and grandfather spent their business careers on the wholesale terminal markets in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Tim graduated from San Diego State University in 1974 with a degree in journalism. Shortly thereafter he began his career at The Packer where he stayed for eight years, leaving in 1983 to join Western Growers as editor of its monthly magazine. In 1986, Tim launched Champ Publishing as an agricultural publishing specialty company.
Today he is a contract publisher for several trade associations and writes extensively on all aspects of the produce business. He began writing for The Produce News in 1997, and currently wears the title of Editor at Large.
