Lee and Maria's 
courtesy of Lee and Maria's.Lee and Maria's courtesy of Lee and Maria's.
Windsor

Kingsville small business boomed during pandemic

While many businesses were shutting down last spring, one in Kingsville ramped up its operations and saw a spike in sales because of the pandemic.

Lee and Maria's has been delivering boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables across Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent for eight years.

Typically, it may move about 10,000 boxes in a year. In 2020, it delivered 26,000 throughout the region and across Ontario. It finishes its delivery service for the season this weekend.

It had to hire 15 new staff members to keep up with demand at a business that normally employs 20 people.

Vice-President of Business Development, Kevin Black, told BlackburnNews.com the small business was forced to scale-up its operations by three-fold in just three weeks.

"People were looking for ways to get fresh food into their house without leaving their homes," he recalled. "I think a lot of the early trepidation in April and early May, we've kind of forgotten about. There was a period of about six weeks when people were scared to leave their houses."

The business is supplied by 20 different farms across the region, but in early spring, it had to look further abroad.

"We actually ran into situations this year where we couldn't buy enough local product and were being forced to move out of the area and move into the London and Middlesex area to purchase produce," said Black.

Ticking off how much produce it distributed, Black said the company delivered 30,680 beefsteak tomatoes, 26,041 cucumbers, 20,716 foil potatoes, and 20,028 ears of sweet corn.

On top of challenges in the supply chain, half the business's fleet was parked for two weeks just as things were really heating up. Two of the four vehicles needed major repairs, but thanks to the generosity of the Pelee Island Winery nearby, it was on the road. It loaned Lee and Maria's two vehicles for two weeks, at no charge.

Many of the new staff members would have otherwise been jobless during a time of economic uncertainty.

"It was a difficult time to hire a team, but we were excited that we could provide jobs to those left without work," said Kathy Mastronardi, the company's vice-president of marketing and wholesale sales.

The pandemic also forced Lee and Maria's to rethink its packaging. Instead of the reuseable Rubber Maid containers, the staff decided to use cardboard boxes to prevent the risk of cross-contamination between households.

Luckily, it had 1,000 boxes on order already in anticipation of a boost in sales province-wide. In mid-March, it increased that to 5,000 boxes.

Black said the company did everything in its power to avoid infection, but it knew there were risks. Fortunately, no one at Lee and Maria's has tested positive for COVID-19.

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