GdeP

Meet Miguel Gonzalez, the Avocado Supplier for NYC’s Top Restaurants | Eater NY

"Gonzalez's company, G de P, began with Miguel Gonzalez ripening avocados in the basement of his apartment and delivering them in his wife Astrid’s VW Passat in 2014, and has since grown into a business that supplies more than 120 of New York’s top restaurants. In the past three years he expanded to two delivery trucks, a warehouse in Queens, and a staff of six, distributing 900 to 950 cases a week (each case weighing 25 pounds and containing up to 48 avocados depending on size). Gonzalez sources fruit through a school friend in Mexico, tightly controls transit conditions and box stacking to avoid bruising, and personally oversees ripening in the Queens warehouse — a process his wife calls “babysitting.” He protects his methods, relies on instinct rather than formulas (saying he can “sense” ripeness without squeezing), and remains deeply involved day to day, waking at 4 a.m., receiving orders, and often joining drivers to deliver because he wants to be an extension of chefs’ teams." - M. Tara Crowl