FROM HUMBLE
BEGINNINGS
Our Story
Peddler’s Son began with an intention to serve. Starting out on a few rough roads throughout Arizona, we have built a successful wholesale delivery service founded on quality, integrity, and transparency. The root of our business is seeding our partner’s success. Sourcing the freshest and finest wholesale products is the zest for excellence we strive for. Garnished in goodness we deliver farm-fresh produce and high-quality provisions with service made simple.
From the beginning, our mission has been to deliver unparalleled value built on quality, integrity, and transparency. We consider it a privilege to connect fresh produce and the finest provisions to our customers with service made simple. We are your trusted culinary partner delivering ingredients for life since 1988.
In the Beginning
Our story begins in the summer of 1988, when Peddler’s Son was born. With an early start in the produce industry from his hometown in Wisconsin, founder Ted Palmisano, brought his vision of wholesale produce delivery to life. From the back of his flatbed one-ton pickup, he built customized racks and assembled an open-air produce market.
At first, with a limited availability of just watermelons, cantaloupe, and honeydew, Ted grew his offerings and expanded his vision. Working out a deal with a manager of an Osco Drug store, Ted made his route from the farm in Apache Junction to sites where he could deliver produce to the townspeople across the Valley. Ted’s commitment to customer service, quality, and honest pricing enabled his dream to grow.Brothers Join Forces
As business continued to boom, Ted enlisted the assistance of his brother Joe, whose background in finance helped Peddler’s Son progress to the next level. With Ted now able to focus on purchasing and warehouse operations and Joe overseeing sales and finance, Peddler’s Son was able to more fiercely contend with the competition, while maintaining its customer centric mindset.
In 1995, this once modest fruit and vegetable distribution company was bursting at the seams, prompting the decision to purchase a 17,000 square foot warehouse. This same fortunate circumstance would occur years later, once again prompting a move to our current 54,000 square foot facility in January 2015.
Peddler's Son Today
Today, our story has improved but our quality customer service has remained the same. We are real, direct, and we know the food service business. And while we lead with our produce selection, we’ve developed long-time relationships with customers through delivering quality products and providing the best customer service. It's the essence of how we got started.
Through positive processes, we have industrialized to keep up with the never ending challenges in this industry and continue to upgrade our technology to increase our communication with our teams, keep safety top-of-mind, and strengthen the connectivity with our customers easier.