‘Red Lobster’ fights for price (1978)

‘Red Lobster’Fights for Price  (March 23, 1978)  

Frank ‘Bud’ Foster, the quintessential Yankee showman who loved to hawk “Fish! Fresh Fish!” at his Greenfield grocery, is a bigger-than-life, living local folk hero who seemed like a fascinating story for me as I plotted out a series on food. Riding shotgun as he drove the store’s truck to the Boston markets seemed to offer a fascinating glimpse of how a small-town grocer goes shopping.

The Red Lobster” seemed a fitting CB handle for Bud Foster, dressed in his bright red, market coat for a day of shopping.

Although that full-length style of coat is omnipresent at the Chelsea market, Foster stood out like a, well, like a red lobster — amid the hundreds of other buyers and dealers in their dark market coats.

It was 2:10 a.m. as he sat in the cab of his six-wheeler, warming it up before pulling out of his Bernardston driveway.

Down Bald Mountain Road, routes 10, 91 and 2, the truck moved toward Boston.

The city was silhouetted by sunrise as he approached at 4 a.m

He reached next to his seat for a silver thermos bottle of black coffee and poured it one-third of the way into a pottery cup on the floor. The hot liquid spilled as the truck jostled down the highway, so that he was forced to hold the cup at arm’s length.

The blond-haired storeowner watched a car whizz by his diesel truck. “That’s how some buyers go to the market,” he thought. “Then they send their trucks in to pick the stuff up.” As long as he had to drive in anyway, Foster couldn’t see having to send two drivers with trucks.

“Maybe when I get old,” he contemplated, “I’ll ride in like that.” At a small coffee shop on the outskirts of the sleeping city, Foster had an order of eggs with a glass of orange juice, and met up with his employee Gary Stevens, who had driven Foster’s other truck in at the same time

They talked about the market for lettuce, which both knew would be in short supply because of too much rain in California. From the fact there were no other buyers in the shop, Foster predicted a quiet marketplace

But regardless at what prices he agreed to for the goods he bought, Foster knew, he would only have to pay the lowest price charged that day, because he bought on a special plan.

THE MARKET IS A UNPREDICTABLE PLACE, he reflected, thinking back on the 20 years he has been shopping there. Before then he had been shopping at the Springfield market and buying his seafood from a traveling supplier. One Thursday he was sold a bad order of clams. He threw it out and had to drive to Boston the following morning to replace it. He has been shopping in Chelsea for fish, vegetables and flowers ever since.

The New England Produce Center would not open until a half-hour later, at 5, so Foster pulled his truck into the lot at 38 Market St. — Boston Market Terminal, which opens at 4:30.

It was a single well-lit building, the length of a football field, where various fruits and produce were displayed. There were Chilean grapes, California asparagus, Mexican watermelons. Washington apples and more, in 30 or more clusters that represented the various distributors.

There were oodles of strawberries, packed in 12-pint crates. In short supply were zucchini and avocados. And there were few heads of lettuce. One stack of boxes containing the leafy vegetable was labeled with a hand-written sign, “SOLD — HOORAY!” Each display represented one freight car of goods.

The men behind the stand-up desks — for they all were men — were dressed mostly in the market coats, some decorated with colorful patches depicting a fruit. There were hats of all kinds.

“THIS IS WHERE YOU HAVE the clout,” reflected Foster, reaching into his red coat to pull out a wad of yellow checks already made out. “Either you pay them or you don’t.” He walked from one salesman to another, paying his outstanding bills and asking, for example, “What is the market on radishes?”

“Two and a quarter,” came the answer.

They openly courted his favor: “How about giving me some business today, Mr Foster?”

“How about some strawberries, Mr. Foster?” One tried to interest him in buying watermelon.

“Who wants to eat watermelon at this time of year?” he asked. “Everyone likes watermelon,” the dealer responded.

“I’m selling them for 19 cents. I’m giving them away. Stop & Shop is selling them for 29 cents,” Foster said.

As he placed his orders, he gave the claim tickets to Stevens, who followed with his hand truck, to collect the goods.

With a dealer, who told him the price on a box of tomatoes would be $19, Foster speculated on when the price would “break.”

“Monday it rained three inches on the West Coast. It’s got to come into Florida,” the dealer predicted.

Foster thought, “He’s losing a buck on every box he sells because the market is dropping.”

Foster bought boxes of grapefruits, lemons and other items — including 35 boxes of lettuce. He had wanted 60 boxes of the leafy vegetable, each containing 24 heads.

“You don’t know how much of a hero to be,” he thought, leaving the market a half hour after he had entered. “Twenty-one dollars for lettuce and he says it’s lousy. But I have to have it. If a gal wants lettuce, she wants lettuce. What are you going to do?

“I paid $16 last week and sold 120 crates. There are guys who don’t buy, but the customers know I’ve got it. They come to me and I make another customer.” Foster got into his truck and headed for the adjacent market.

“IT’S A CRAZY, CRAZY MARKET. You have to sense the market right off, whether to buy or not to.” Compared to the New England Produce Center, the Boston Terminal is peanuts.

There are 130 dealers, each in a separate stall.

New England had moved its market from South Boston about seven years ago, and after refusing to follow its lead, Terminal was forced to move also.

“They’re so jealous, they won’t even open the gate between the two,” Foster reflected. “They opened it up for three days and they started squabbling, so we have to go around.”

Foster’s, truck blended in with hundreds of others from Beverly, Peabody, Portsmouth, N.H., Hyannis and elsewhere. He backed up at a loading dock, entered the office of one stall and got on the telephone to call a dealer in another part of the tremendous market.

“Have you got any bushels of spinach? This is Foster. Clipped? Yes, I know I’m going to get clipped!”

He got off the phone and approached a dealer for some summer squash and zucchini. There were only six crates of summer squash available, although one worker was walking out with a hand truck stacked with crates of zucchini.

“I see some there,” Foster pointed.

Wha’d you do? Sell it to the big boys?”

“I can’t skim off any zucchini,” the dealer said. “They’ve been buying since 4 this morning.”

“You don’t even open ’til 5,” Foster countered.

“But the phone’s been ringing since 4,” the dealer said.

Foster reflected as he walked “Sometimes you don’t buy.”

“SOMETIMES YOU BEG. The guys’ have it on special. That makes it scarce on the market.” At another stall he asked for avocados.

“I’m expecting a truck.”

“When do you expect it?”

“It should have been here at midnight.”

When that truckload, and any large shipment arrives, the price can drop, because the supply has changed.

“This where you’ve got to sense the market,” Foster reflected. “If you know the market is short on something, you buy it.” He looked at the crowded parking lot, beyond the trucks to the rows of Cadillacs, Imperials and Continentals owned by the vendors and buyers, thinking, “That’s just a drop in the bucket. They lose more than that everyday —or make it.”

A truck pulled into the lot from R.C. Barstow Trucking Co. in Hadley, which delivers to market much of the produce from area growers. Foster also brings their goods into the market during the growing season.

Other trucks, marked Cost-Plus Foods and Produce, carry the food from the Boston market to the one in Springfield, where, Foster recalled, it is slightly more expensive.

One day, Foster recalled, he had forgotten his long shopping list, on which he notes what he’s bought.

“I did the whole thing from memory,” he remembered, “and only forgot one thing.”

Price, of course, was not the only thing that guided Foster through the market, and he spent considerable time picking through the tomatoes and bananas, choosing in part for color.

“Bananas,” he reflected, opening one of the three mammoth cooler doors to reveal towers of Chiquita cartons,”come in cold, green. They can hold them, gas them and heat them.”

He told the dealer, “I want something to be ready for tomorrow and Saturday.

Those are ready today.” —On being shown other cartons, Foster pulled off the tops and inspected the fruits’ color and temperature.

FOR ALL OF ITS WHEELING AND DEALING, the market feels like home to Foster.

“I have fun. The tougher the market is, the more of a challenge it is. Lettuce could be six dollars next week. Cukes can be $25 or $28. Today you can buy them for 12. It fluctuates from hour to hour. You’ve got to feel whether the guy is trying to put one over on you or if you’d better grab it quick.”

Foster found the avacados he had been looking for, but they were in a “second-hand store” where some goods are hoarded and escalated in price.

EVEN WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE PRICE, he knew, “I don’t need them that bad. They sell to co-ops and people who want one or two items.”

Lifting the cover from a box of tomatoes in another stall, Foster found what he liked.

“These are pretty good looking,” he said to the merchant. The smalls were $7 a box; the mediums were $13.

“It looks like they’re going to come down. I’d better clean up.”

At 7 o’clock, Foster declared, “Now I’ve got to go to work.”

He opened the doors at the rear of his 20-foot truck body, set the ramps to the loading dock, moved some skids to the side and pulled out a hand truck. He entered a stall and a few minutes later returned with three crates of celery, two of scallions and seven bushels of spinach.

“This is where you have to know where to count the pieces and know if you ordered 15, you pick up 15,” he said, working more physically now.

Foster climbed into the cab, started the motor. He removed his market coat, as the day began to feel more like April than it had been. Underneath was a bright, plaid sport jacket.

“They call me the best-dressed truck driver in Boston.”

He picked up the CB microphone to locate Stevens, who was somewhere in another part of the market.

“TIDAL WAVE … How about you, Tidal Wave? … You’ve got the Red Lobster here.”

There was no answer.

Although there was a 10-minute traffic delay before he could move, Foster reflected that the market was relatively quiet because there wasn’t much available. He thought ahead to when the busy season, when the farm stands open, and to a holiday when everything gets backed up.

At stall 101, where Foster parked, a fork-lift pulled into the truck with 18 50-pound bags of onions and 25 50-pound bags of Prince Edward Island potatoes.

“The quality down here is excellent,” reflected Foster. “When it’s high in price, it’s because it’s scarce and it’s not too good. Any of these guys here will go down to New York if the price is high enough.”

“Mr. Foster.” called one merchant as the supermarket’s shopper walked by with his hand truck.

“Can you use some Sunkist 140 lemons? The price is right.”

“I bought them till Monday,” Foster said

Already, Stevens had returned in his truck to Greenfield, so the first of the produce and fish could be placed in the supermarket.

THE PACE OF THE MARKET, which had been nearly frantic when he arrived, was becoming more and more relaxed, as fewer and fewer buyers were in the stalls.

All buying at the center would end by 10, although in some stalls, there already was little to be sold. By 2 or 3 p.m., the market closes to trucks, except those bringing in the next day’s supply.

Foster’s truck headed to Roxbury, to the Boston Flower Exchange, where about 25 growers are gathered in a hall which is quiet and sedate compared to its produce counterparts. With 20 cactus and 12 dozen carnations, he left.

Foster buys flowers mostly from local growers, and not that many.

To the vendor, he said, “It’s National Secretaries Week so I doubled my order.” The gulls were circling overhead at the New England Fish Exchange, Where Foster’s truck arrived at 10 a.m

Three hours earlier there, the fishermen had auctioned off their catches, and the high. prices bid by the processors had set the day’s prices, which may be double what they were the day before.

Foster had ordered his fish by telephone the day before, because his order takes a while to be processed. He would pay yesterday’s prices. Like at the produce market, it’s a gamble.

In the fisheries, there were the offices, but also the large odiferous back rooms with radios playing loudly, where workers cut up the fish systematically, for fillets.

He loaded on his truck, with the help of some of the workers: two 58-pound bags of hardshell clams, 100 pounds of silver striped fish and haddock.

HERE THE TALK WAS OF SEAFOOD ALONE.

“The lobster market is down,” Foster told a fishmonger. “I’m going to lose my shirt.”

He knew lobsters were not a very saleable item, but that lobsters provide his store with an image.

“Don’t drop, then,” the dealer said.

“I’ve got to,” said Foster.

He asked if there was any swordfish.

“I didn’t like them in the early week,” said the fishmonger. “They were mushy so I sent them back. I’ll have them tomorrow, Monday. It’s still too early for them.”

Just as there had been railroad tracks on the opposite docking side at the produce market, here the opposite side was on the water, for the fish to be brought in on boats.

In the parking lot, however, a tractor pulled three wagonloads of red perch to a dealer outside the state-owned complex.

The vehicle hit a bump in the road and a fish flipped in the air, landing on the pavement. Gulls circled above.

Gulls were also present on the roofs of the parked trucks at another market where Foster picked up frogs’ legs, shrimp, cherrystone clams, mussels and frozen oysters — all packed in ice for the long trip home.

At 10:30, the truck headed toward Harrison Street in Chinatown: There Foster got out to shop for bean sprouts, egg roll skins and crab at a small ethnic foods store. He was conspicuous, the only Caucasian shopping there, and the only one not placing his order in Chinese.

For much of the ride home, Red Lobster drank from his metal thermos black coffee he had collected, cup by Styrofoam cup, from the market stalls’ complimentary coffee machines. It kept him awake.

As he approached Gardner, the overcast skies began to lighten. And he became, as always, more and more tired as he neared his destination.

“When I get back,” he knew, “they’ll be waiting for me. There will be people waiting for their f-r-r-resh fish.”

He pulled down Allen Street, into his parking lot, and around to the rear of the store, beside Stevens’ parked truck.

A restaurant owner was waiting to do his bulk shopping. 

Foster’s workers began unloading the Red Lobster’s truck.

— RICHIE DAVIS