The Leungs have shown a penchant for farming vegetables and growing a market for them and other produce from their base in southern Hillsborough
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published July 27, 2003
WIMAUMA - For more than two decades Tony Leung and his wife have been raising exotic vegetables in southern Hillsborough County.
Their bok choy, Napa cabbage and winter melons are found in produce stands and restaurant dishes all over the Southeast. And potted and packaged herbs from the Leungs' greenhouses are carried in hundreds of supermarkets, including Publix, Kash n' Karry and Albertsons.
Yet Leung, owner and president of Sanwa Growers Inc., has little patience for people who pigeonhole him as a grower of Asian produce.
"That gets more attention than necessary," he says with a wave of his hand.
Tony and Connie Leung, natives of Hong Kong who emigrated to Canada and then to Florida, were too ambitious and too savvy to settle for success in an ethnic niche. So when other growers and importers moved into the Asian market - making snow peas and Chinese cabbage mainstream - Sanwa became much more than a farming operation.
Today the Leungs continue to cultivate 600 acres of open farmland and greenhouses in Wimauma and Ruskin. But their company also has become a major food wholesaler, and not just for an ethnic market.
With nearly 300 employees, two packing houses, four wholesale markets and a fleet of 44 trucks, family-owned Sanwa still makes money - more than $60-million in revenues last year - moving food from field to user. More and more, however, the fields are in Thailand, Honduras or California. Sanwa-grown produce accounts for less than 10 percent of the company's revenues. Among the company's biggest sellers: more than 8-million pounds of broccoli imported each year from Mexico.
Leung, 50, doesn't whine about vanishing Florida farmland as he watches Wal-Marts replace watermelon patches in his adopted hometown. Raised dirt poor in Hong Kong, Sanwa's president is a hard-eyed realist who knows that simple economics rule.
"It's a question of where you can find both cheap labor and knowledge," Leung said, with the exasperated tone of a teacher dealing with a particularly slow student. "Production decisions are always based on money."
The Leungs, whose revenues have grown more than tenfold over the past decade, have shown they know how to make money. By paring back their agricultural risk and building a regional wholesale business, Sanwa manages to thrive in a field increasingly controlled by giant corporations.
Among the competitors is Sysco Food Services, which dominates the restaurant supply business nationally and has a massive warehouse just minutes from Sanwa's headquarters in Wimauma. The Leungs say they're happy to pick up Sysco's leftovers, dealing with mom-and-pop restaurants that need quicker turnaround on orders and customized deliveries.
Cavernous Sam's Clubs pitch their rock-bottom prices and jumbo packaging to small grocers and independent restaurateurs. Sanwa's wholesale markets in Tampa, Miami, Sanford and Atlanta compete for the same customers by offering comparable prices and more personalized service.
Connie Leung, Sanwa's vice president, said the company has lost some customers in the past few years as independent restaurants were squeezed out by large chains that demand national, not regional, suppliers.
"We just have to sell our existing customers more," she said. "Customers will come up to Tony and ask if he can get something new for them. And Tony always says yes."
Market open to all
Sanwa's wholesale market in Tampa, on E Hillsborough Avenue by the railroad tracks, resembles a scaled-down Sam's Club, with giant pallets of soda, rice and paper goods and coolers stocked with enormous chunks of cheese and meats.
But the Leungs' warehouse, which is open to the public as well as Sanwa's wholesale customers, also carries tiny green Thai eggplants, 40-pound bags of charcoal from Argentina and imported rice cookers. Forklifts zip around the front loading dock, moving pallets full of goods to customers' trucks.
Mimi Kang, from the Sushi Ninja restaurant in Brandon, fills a shopping cart with ginger and green onions on one of her biweekly visits to Sanwa. Shanti Prashad, a native of Guyana, picks up giant pumpkin squash to cook for a church function. Pat Iacovella stops in to pick up chicken, peppers and lettuce for CDB's Italian Restaurant in Tampa.
"If you use a big supplier and the order comes in and it's not up to snuff" nothing can be done, said Iacovella, CDB's owner. "I like to come here and see the stuff for myself. Prices are reasonable, it's fresh, and there's a big turnover."
Tony Leung is at his Tampa market well before the sun rises every morning. "It's important to observe the behavior of my customers," he said. "I've learned a lot about the restaurant business over the past four or five years."
A slightly built bundle of energy, Leung moves around the warehouse like an errant pinball. He has a veteran staff of five salesmen who handle the regular accounts, coming in as early as 1 a.m. each day to take orders. The warehouse opens for customers at 3 a.m. and closes at 1 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m. Saturdays.
Leung is the big-picture guy, known for storing the complexities of the global produce market in his head and seldom touching a computer. He's constantly fine-tuning the physical layout at the warehouse, a former banana storehouse into which he's poured nearly $3-million over the past seven years. He's now trying to reconfigure the checkout area.
"It's too cumbersome," Leung says, stepping back and eyeing the cashier's station. "My customers want to get in and out fast so they can get back to their business."
He's pondering where to put the fresh seafood his customers have been clamoring for. And he's still wondering why plain water sells but flavored water didn't.
As a dealer in perishable produce, Leung's business can be jolted by weather, Wendy's Caesar Salad or a Cinco de Mayo weekend.
When Cinco de Mayo hits, his cilantro sales boom. When Wendy's pumps up the salad ads, romaine lettuce gets scarce and pricey for everyone else. And heavy spring rains this year have translated into high prices for everything from green onions to cabbage.
On pricing, Leung sets the parameters; his staff makes the deals; Connie, 48, handles the money. She said 70 percent of Sanwa's customers pay cash or by credit card, and she keeps close tabs on accounts receivable.
"I can't tell you the price of anything here in the warehouse," she said. "But I can drive down the street and tell you which restaurants are past due on their accounts with us."
Connie, crisply dressed and perfectly coiffed, said she knows Sanwa has a reputation for being tight on credit. She's proud of it.
"I have to pay my vendors on time," she said. "Having good credit gives us lots more buying power. When chicken wings are tight, who's the supplier going to sell to? Somebody with bad credit or us?"
Home, business separate
The Leungs met as students at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Connie, raised in Hong Kong, was studying accounting. Tony, whose family emigrated to Canada when he was 19, majored in horticulture.
Though the two shared a homeland, that's where the similarities ended. Connie was an only child raised by prosperous educators. Tony was one of nine children. His father was a carpenter in Hong Kong, then opened a neighborhood grocery in Toronto.
"We came from completely different backgrounds," Connie said. "But we've been together 25 years so I guess it's worked."
While both are devoted to Sanwa, they have drawn a firm line between work and home. Parents of a college-age daughter and two sons, ages 13 and 16, the couple say they never discuss business at home. Tony, an early riser, returns home each day by 5 p.m. to fix dinner. Connie, who transports the kids to school in the morning, stays later if needed.
Neither works on Sunday. And when they turn off their cell phones, their employees know they don't want to discuss business.
The couple is quick to credit Sanwa's success to long-time employees who have risen in the organization. General manager Sue Grier started 11 years ago as a part-time payroll clerk and first mistook Tony Leung for a farmworker. Eugenio Alvarado, operations manager, got a laborer's job at Sanwa the day he arrived in the States from Mexico 15 years ago. Jeronimo Castillo, who runs Sanwa's farming operation, was a single father of three when he was hired on the farm 22 years ago.
"I desperately needed help," Castillo said as he stands in the shade of one of Sanwa's 10 greenhouses. "They didn't give me money, but they gave me the opportunity to grow and learn as much as I want. I have graduated from the School of Tony."
Eye on the economy
From his perch in the wholesale food business, Leung senses an improvement in the economy.
"After Sept. 11 (2001), things slowed down, and we were lucky to maintain a little growth," he said. "But in the last 60 days, I've seen some pickup. Sales for the last three months are up 15 to 20 percent compared to a year ago. That's a big difference."
Though his energy seems boundless, Leung is preparing for the day he can retire. "Five years from now," he says. His wife and general manager say that's a promise they've heard before. "If Tony played golf half a day a week, he'd be retired," Grier said.
Leung, who describes himself as a hippie in his youth, said he always wanted to feed the hungry. "Then I got a girlfriend and needed to pay for an apartment," he said of his diversion into business. "But that's what I see myself doing later in life. Farming is something I've been doing all my life. I can't imagine ever giving it up."
As for Sanwa's future, the Leungs are confidant new leaders will emerge as they pull back.
"It's a very simple formula," said Leung. "You buy for $1 and sell for $2. Otherwise you're not in business very long."
