{"id":418,"date":"2018-03-16T21:30:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T21:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/?p=418"},"modified":"2018-03-16T21:50:24","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T21:50:24","slug":"produce-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/2018\/03\/16\/produce-quickly\/","title":{"rendered":"Produce Quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It’s half past midnight at the 7th Street Produce Market, and the hustle and bustle is invigorating, semi-trucks are revving their engines as they snake their way into the open air market. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day I wake up is like Groundhog Day but it beats the hell out of working in an office,\u201d says Danny Astorga, \u00a0ripping open a box of plantains from Columbia. He smell-checks one, decides it\u2019s good and tosses it to his \u201cmuchacho\u201d — one of the packagers who works for him. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bags of white onions and red tomatoes stacked seven feet high are lined up behind boxes of a variety of potatoes and chiles; they are<\/span> packed on top of a large wooden pallet that demarcate the boundaries of Astorga\u2019s company, Pronto Produce.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt means produce quickly,\u201d he mumbles, translating the words from Spanish to English. <\/span><\/p>\n

Six days a week, at the corner of Central Avenue and 7<\/span>th<\/span> Street, vendors like Astorga prepare their produce as early as midnight to ensure mom and pop grocery stores and local restaurants get their fruit when they need it. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Danny and his sister are co-owners of Pronto Produce, located at the 7th Street Produce Market in Downtown Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On a brief tour of his display, he points to the fruit and vegetables for sale, proudly adding, \u201cWe have the widest varieties in fruits and vegetables that anybody has ever seen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur main demographic here is independent ethnic businesses, whether it’s a small restaurant or small market,\u201d he says. To meet their needs, he carries foods that would \u201cbe rare in your regular American households.<\/span>\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The general produce Danny\u2019s business provides may not be found in grocery big market grocery stores. Danny describes the types of households his business caters to, \u201cNot too many American household have plantains or yucca root, but if you go to a Cuban household, you\u2019ll find yucca or if you go to a household with anybody that\u2019s Central American or Jamaican, you\u2019ll find plantains\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

He explains that many of his customers are street vendors. The kind of men and women who are often fixtures on busy street corners under multi-colored umbrellas, offering sweet fruits doused in salt, lemon, and Tajin. Or the people who offer fresh produce out of tricked out trucks in what are considered Los Angeles\u2019 food deserts. <\/span><\/p>\n

Astorga has been in the food business nearly all of his life. It was the family business and as a teen he was begrudgingly dragged to the market by his father to work the same kind of hours he works now. Midnight to noon. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now he owns Pronto with his sister. They are equal partners and he jokes that she\u2019s the \u201cbrains of the operation.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Astorga\u2019s business is cash based and what paperwork there is to handle — shipping orders, thin yellow receipts handed to him by truck drivers, receipts — he takes care of behind a green painted desk about four feet high. <\/span><\/p>\n

Even in the dark, the stall is a riot of vivid colors. Next to the desk is neatly stacked crates of glistening mangos twelve columns high and four rows wide. On the floor next to Astorga are small boxes of green beans and mint cucumbers.\u00a0Mesh bags of brown, white and red onions create a small mountain. <\/span><\/p>\n

After checking his morning orders, Astorga explains why he prefers working in the produce industry over working a corporate job. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur,\u201d he says. \u201cSince I was a kid.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat was very unconventional for a public-school system. The public-school system teaches you to be an employee. I never agreed with the majority of their teaching, so therefore it was contradictory in that sense.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cComing here actually opened my eyes to entrepreneurship,” he says referring to the chaotic market. <\/span><\/p>\n

Astorga, who spends most of his twelve hour shift on his feet takes, sits for a quick break to recall his first memories of working in the industry. <\/span><\/p>\n

“I was about 13 to 14 years old and I used to come on the weekends,\u201d he says, rambling for a bit before shaking his head and landing on \u201cunnatural\u201d to describe the late-night schedule as a young student. \u201cIt wasn’t something you would like especially if you are a high school kid.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo kid wants to do that,\u201d he laughs. <\/span><\/p>\n

But he is grateful for the opportunity it gave him to see that there are more careers than those his teachers told him about. Becoming a doctor, lawyer or any kind of office worker didn\u2019t interest him. \u201cYou get taught that everything’s so traditional – you’re gonna go to an office and you’re gonna work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and for the majority of us, that’s not the case.”<\/span><\/p>\n

By 2 a.m. the market is operating at full swing and the energy is magic. As workers arrive, they immediately start unloading produce from refrigerated semi-trucks. They greet each other with a quick \u201cbuenos dias\u201d and keep it moving. The\u00a0vendor on the corner next to Astorga blasts the cumbia song \u201cLlorar\u201d by Los Socios Del Ritmo. Mini forklifts zoom past one another, loaded with crates of strawberries, nopales, and zucchini. And still, more 18-wheeler trucks continue to arrive from both entrances of the market.\u00a0The scene appears haphazard but there is an order to it, says Astorga. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear Astorga has a deep seeded love for the hundred-year-old market and all of the changes it has undergone. Where once european immigrants set up shop now mostly Latino vendors occupy the space. And the five acre complex where the market sits is returning to its former glory. Although it was once part of the second largest produce market in the world, the area is went through a deep decline in the 1970s and 1980s. But in the past few years developers have invested millions to refurbish the formerly abandoned buildings. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is an unconventional work environment but Astorga says it operates like a large family, with all of the good and bad things that entails. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the hours make it so that people can be very temperamental,\u201d he says. \u201cBut at the same time, it’s also very family oriented. We are like a family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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  It’s half past midnight at the 7th Street Produce Market, and the hustle and bustle is invigorating, semi-trucks are revving their engines as they snake their way into the open air market. \u201cEvery day I wake up is like Groundhog Day but it beats the hell out of working in an office,\u201d says Danny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2018.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}