Produce distributors in the US

Eight metro produce pages on this site describe delivery days, order minimums, cut-off times and walk-in counters. Not one of them says what the payment clock is, because it is not a commercial term either side sets. It is written into 7 CFR 46.2, which defines what full payment promptly means in eleven sub-paragraphs.

The one that governs an ordinary purchase is sub-paragraph (aa)(5), and it reads: payment for produce purchased by a buyer, within 10 days after the day on which the produce is accepted. Ten days from acceptance is the federal default across this whole trade, and it applies whether or not anybody mentioned it when the account was opened.

Longer terms are allowed and are routine, but the regulation is specific about how. Under (aa)(11), parties electing different times of payment must reduce their agreement to writing before entering into the transaction and keep a copy in their records, and the party claiming such an agreement exists has the burden of proving it. Read that as a practical instruction rather than a legal one: net 30 agreed on the phone and never written down is, if it is ever tested, net 10 with the burden sitting on whoever says otherwise.

There is a ceiling as well, and it comes from the trust rather than from the payment rule. To qualify for the protections described in the next section, terms for payment cannot exceed 30 days from the date of acceptance of the product. A supplier offering 45 or 60 days is giving up its own statutory protection to do it, which is worth knowing when a house that never discounts suddenly offers terms.

Acceptance is the word doing the work in all of this, and it has a definition too. USDA's guidance on contracting is that in most instances the act of acceptance occurs when a buyer unloads product for any reason other than inspection, or diverts the load, and that a buyer who accepts product loses its right to reject. The clock starts when the pallet comes off the truck, not when the invoice is opened.

This is the part of the Act the trade itself organizes around, and the half that gets left out is the half a buyer should read first.

The statute is 7 U.S.C. 499e(c)(2), and the reach of it is in the list rather than in the verb. Perishable agricultural commodities received by a commission merchant, dealer, or broker in all transactions, and all inventories of food or other products derived from perishable agricultural commodities, and any receivables or proceeds from the sale of such commodities or products, shall be held by such commission merchant, dealer, or broker in trust for the benefit of all unpaid suppliers or sellers, until full payment of the sums owing in connection with such transactions has been received.

So it is not only the crates. It is what the crates became, and the money owed for what they became. AMS describes the effect as putting sellers of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables in a priority status if their buyer becomes insolvent or files for bankruptcy, and says the debtor's trust assets are not available for general distribution to other creditors until all valid trust claims have been satisfied. The stronger framing, that a produce supplier is paid ahead of secured creditors holding a blanket lien, is a real reading and it comes from a law firm rather than from the regulator: Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren calls it a super-priority and notes those suppliers are also not subject to preference avoidance in bankruptcy. It is worth knowing which of those two sentences is the government's.

Now the half that points back at the reader. The same analysis observes that a lender's collateral can include perishable agricultural commodities such as when the borrower is a restaurant or grocery store. A buyer large enough to be a dealer under the Act holds its own unpaid produce, and the receivables from selling it, in trust for its supplier. The threshold is the one from the register section, more than 2,000 pounds in a day, so a small kitchen is not a dealer and the trust does not reach it. A multi-site operator or a grocery buyer very likely is one, and on that side of the line the trust is an obligation rather than a protection.

One clause reaches all the way into how an order is placed, which is unusual for a statute from 1930. Under 7 CFR 46.46(f)(5), a buyer trading produce through an electronic system, or its third party electronic vendor, must allow sufficient space for the seller to include the required trust statement of intent to preserve trust benefits on invoices and billing statements, and must accept a seller's notice of intent to preserve those benefits. Any act or omission inconsistent with that responsibility is unlawful. That is a rule about what an ordering system has to leave room for, and this page makes no claim about whether any particular software does. It is a question worth asking of whatever a supplier asks you to order through.

Most trades leave a buyer to hear about a bad payer through gossip. In produce the federal government is required to publish it, along with the names of the people behind the business.

AMS states the duty in every release: USDA is required to publish the finding that a business has committed willful, repeated and flagrant PACA violations and impose restrictions on those principals determined to be responsibly connected to the business during the violation period. Those individuals, including sole proprietors, partners, members, managers, officers, directors, or major stockholders, may not be employed by or affiliated with any PACA licensee without USDA approval. The restriction follows the person rather than only the company.

The feed is not occasional. We captured twenty-five releases published between 20 April and 9 September 2026, which is roughly three a month. One from 9 September names a Georgia company that failed to make prompt payment to 20 produce sellers in the amount of $1,922,775 for produce it purchased, received and accepted between February 2023 and February 2024, and records that it has been barred from operating in the produce industry until March 2027. Another single release from the same month names six businesses and thirteen individuals with the award amount against each, and one of the six is a supermarket rather than a distributor, which is a useful reminder that this Act binds the buying side too.

The enforcement is automatic rather than discretionary, and that is the part worth knowing when a supplier suddenly stops answering the phone. When a licensed firm fails to pay an award, USDA suspends its license and the firm is prohibited from operating in the produce industry until the award is paid to the complainant's satisfaction. While it is suspended, its officers cannot be employed by or affiliated with any other licensee without the consent of the Secretary of Agriculture.

The route in for a seller is cheap, and the clock is nine months from the date payment was due. An informal complaint runs through the ePACA portal or a regional office for a $100 filing fee. A formal complaint is notarized, filed in triplicate, and costs $500, recoverable if the respondent is found to have violated the Act. There is also a phone number most people do not know about: AMS says it will give general information about a prospective customer's PACA complaint and license history to anybody who calls 800-495-7222. If you are about to extend credit to a new buyer, that is a free reference check with the regulator.

USDA publishes daily wholesale terminal market prices, differentiated by the commodity's growing origin, variety, size, package and grade. It publishes them for twelve cities: Asheville, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Columbia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia and Raleigh. Each of the twelve gets a fruit report, a vegetable report and an onions and potatoes report, and most get nuts as well.

Line that list up against the metros on this page and six of them are on it. A buyer in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York or Philadelphia can look up what the trade paid this morning for the item they were quoted on, at the same grade and pack, and the number is federal and free. In Tampa and Denver it does not exist, and our Denver produce page sets out what a buyer does instead in a city without one.

The consequence is not that suppliers in six cities are cheaper. It is that in six of these metros a quote can be checked against a public reference and in two of them it cannot, which changes what a second quote is for. Where the report exists, a second quote mostly confirms a number you can already see. Where it does not, the second quote is the only reference there is, which is the position every row on our Tampa produce page sells from.

The other half of the same service sits at the growing end rather than the selling end. AMS publishes shipping point reports as well as terminal reports, and both feed a public data service at mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov. A buyer watching a crop move from a shipping point price to a terminal price is watching the margin that pays for everything in between, which is most of what the companies on this page do for a living.

The most expensive mistake in produce buying is not overpaying. It is taking two quotes from what turn out to be one company, deciding the price is keen, and building a menu on a supply base of one.

Read across all eight metros and the pattern repeats in six of them. Sysco owns produce houses on these pages under two different names across six metros, which is nine of the rows below. FreshPoint publishes the legacy company names as separate logins on its own site, so the brand a buyer knows locally and the brand that answers the phone can differ without anybody concealing anything. Restaurant Depot appears three times. What Chefs Want and Mr Greens appear twice each. None of that is hidden and none of it is wrongdoing: it is how this trade consolidated, and every instance in the list below traces to the company's own site.

It is harder to see in produce than in most categories, because a market merchant's name is usually a family name and a family name survives a sale. A house trading under the same name for seventy years may have been bought twice in that time, and the bay number will not tell you.

The practical test has nothing to do with this page. Ask both of your suppliers who owns them, and ask which warehouse the order ships from. Two names at one address are one supplier however the invoices are headed, and our New York produce market rows show how many companies can sit behind a single door before that question starts to matter.