Nardelli Bros. commemorates 125 years

The Nardelli family has been offering field-to-fork produce services for 125 years and Nardelli Bros. Inc.- Lake View Farms continues to be a trusted name throughout the produce industry.

To celebrate its 125th year, the company has done some promotions and is proud to continue offering great service. The grower/shipper is now in its fifth generation and also offers cooling operations, packing, shipping and delivery, and transportation services.

In mid-August, the company was in the middle of its dry program, with peppers, cucumbers, squash, eggplant and corn (tray pack, wild violet, bi-color, yellow and white) making up the majority of its product.

“We started over the last few weeks planting our fall items, which will go through the Thanksgiving timeframe and into December, weather depending,” said Bill Nardelli Jr., vice president of sales for the Cedarville, NJ-based company. “Those include cooking greens — cilantro, parsley, lettuces, herbs, radishes and items of that sort.”

With a big emphasis on greens, cabbage and leafy items, fall is an important time for the company.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time; our family has been in the greens and cabbage business for many years,” Nardelli said. “With a lot of the fall promotion, all of those items are big volume for us and we do a lot of promotions with our retailers.”

That includes the Thanksgiving holiday, where there’s a big push, and consumers start gravitating towards many of these fall items as the weather starts to cool down a bit.

“We like to have a diverse lineup of items,” Nardelli said. “We try to have a wide array of everything throughout the fall as it gives people many items to choose from.”

Last year, the fall season was a good one for the company, and it tries to be consistent volume-wise with how much it plants in a given year.

“We have some good retail and wholesale partners that we have contracts set up with ahead of time, and we’ll always have some open market availability, but we try to be consistent with our planting sizes each fall,” Nardelli said. “We just started planting and transplanting items, but we expect to be on time this season.”

There’s a chance it could be a little bit early, but Nardelli anticipates mid- to late-September for most items, with things really ramping up in October and into November.

The weather is always a challenge and labor continues to be a problem, so the company works hard to overcome what’s faced them.

“We’ve had some hot and dry weather, as well as periods of heavy rain over the last month or two, so there’s been some challenges with that,” Nardelli said. “Whatever Mother Nature brings, we try to deal with it the best we can and move forward. Hopefully, we will have some good weather and a good season for our fall items.”

Nardelli Bros. Inc.- Lake View Farms has stayed consistent on its trajectory, growing at a steady pace through the years for all facets of the business, from the farm all the way to transportation and packaging initiatives.

Photo: Bill Nardelli Jr., Jim Nardelli and Bill Nardelli Sr.

A graduate of the University of Miami, Keith Loria is a D.C.-based award-winning journalist who has been writing for major publications for close to 20 years on topics as diverse as real estate, food and sports. He started his career with the Associated Press and has held high editorial positions at magazines aimed at healthcare, sports and technology. When not busy writing, he can be found enjoying time with his wife, Patricia, and two daughters, Jordan and Cassidy.