BUFFALO, N.Y. — Produce distributors from Western New York stepped-up big time to help hospital service workers at Erie County Medical Center this week.
With the restaurant industry influx right now, local produce suppliers have extra food that they don't want waste, so they made a big donation.
The wholesale business is understandably slow right now at the Sunset Fruit and Vegetable Company leaving it with lots of extra fruits and veggies it isn't able to sell before they go bad.
So this week, the company dropped off lots of food at ECMC to help out members of the cleaning and support staff.
"So, it's a nice little grab bag for them to take home. Should get them well through the weekend. We had some help with, we had loaves of bread donated by DiCamillo, Produce Peddlers donated some mushrooms, our apple guy, Schwab Farms, out in Niagara County, he donated, and then obviously we put everything together, and added in some lettuce, and oranges, and bananas, and stuff," Michael Schimenti said.
Schimenti is a vice president at Sunset. His company adapted quickly to this situation we're facing and also decided to put together home delivery produce boxes for people, so they don't have to leave the house to get fresh produce.
"We're delivering five days a week, Monday through Friday. We come up with new q-packs every weekend for the following week," Schimenti said.
As of right now, Schimenti doesn't know whether the quarantine packs, or q-packs, will continue after the coronavirus outbreak, but he's hopeful.
"I would say it definitely has potential. I don't know that many produce companies, or markets, or whatever are going, you know, delivery," he says.