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ASCENDANT INDEPENDENT
Seabra Foods Supermarket
Variety of international foods at East Coast chain helps shoppers maintain traditions. BY DOUG OHLEMEIER
Rich ethnic traditional foods fill shopping carts and the produce department at the Deerfield Beach, FL, Seabra Foods Supermarket.The store is part of an East
Coast chain that sells food in a highly interna- tional-flavored supermarket, offering items not frequently seen in conventional supermarkets.
One of 14 stores in four states — along with New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massa- chusetts — the Deerfield Beach location is in a shopping plaza on bustling Sample Road in South Florida, halfway between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale.
Calling itself the leading U.S. ethnic food retailer, Seabra Foods specializes in supplying international items from countries such as Portugal, Brazil and Spain. About half of the chain’s customers are of Portuguese, Brazilian or Spanish origin, but they also appeal broadly to other Spanish and Latin American shoppers.
There are six Seabra stores in New Jersey, three of which are in Newark, where the chain began in 1972 with a small store. By the late 1980s, other stores opened in New Jersey. In
22 / MARCH 2019 / PRODUCE BUSINESS
2004, Seabra Foods expanded into Florida, opening first in Deerfield Beach and in 2017, expanding into Orlando. In 2014, the chain moved into New England, where it operates six stores in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
NEW STORES ON THE WAY
Stores in Boca Raton, FL, and Parkland, FL, are scheduled to open in March 2019. Another Newark location, to be the chain’s largest, is scheduled to begin operations in April 2019. Half of the Ferry Plaza, NJ, store will be a supermarket, with the other half designed to sell wholesale volumes of produce to customers, including restaurants.
Seabra Foods uses brokers and buys produce direct from North American, Central Amer- ican and South American grower-shippers throughout the year. It purchases daily trailer loads from the Vineland Auction in Vineland, NJ.The chain also employs a buyer at the Hunts Point Terminal Market in the nearby Bronx, NY, picking up product nightly. Twice a week, trucks run on Interstate 95 to and from Florida,
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SEABRA FOODS SUPERMARKETS
where product is loaded from growing opera- tions and Miami area ports.
The first thing shoppers see walking into the Deerfield Beach and other Seabra Foods stores is large and colorful produce displays.The Deerfield Beach store’s entryway opens into the store’s large produce department. Inside the entryway last fall, shoppers walked by a large display of honey tangerines.
Produce is a key part of Seabra Foods’ stores. “Produce is the power aisle,” says Filipe Silva, general manager. “It gives you an impact. When you walk in, you feel like, ‘wow, look at this place.’ It impresses you to buy. It gets you excited about buying whatever’s being displayed.”
The Deerfield Beach store’s 5,000-square- foot produce department merchandises 500 SKUs of fresh produce. Its demographic is primarily upper- and middle-class Brazilians.
SUNSHINE STATE EXPANSION
Seabra Foods expanded into South Florida to serve the large Brazilian population, as well as other ethnic groups. “The population of