IN 1996 Courtney Pullen returned to Jamaica after spending much of his childhood in the United States, but not wanting to enter the work world, the young man, at the time, turned to farming and distributing farm produce to vendors in Kingston’s Coronation Market to make a living. Little did he know that over two decades later, his act of buying goods from farmers and reselling in the market would spawn the company known today as Everything Fresh Limited, a company that imports and distributes various high-demand food products to include dairy products, delicatessen meats, assorted dry and canned goods, fruits, vegetables, seafood and meats from foreign markets and distributes them locally to various supermarkets and hotels.

“I’m used to doing my own thing. So one of the first things I did was, we had family land, we went into farming,” Pullen, managing director of Everything Fresh Limited, told the Jamaica Observer about his first venture into business in Jamaica. He said as a returning resident, he realised that jobs in Jamaica were not paying much and so he started his own business.

Then, Pullen was just a sole trader, but the business was growing as the initial 5-acre property which Pullen first started to farm had expanded to 20 acres. Pullen was now not only selling farm produce from his own plot and farmers in the area in which he operated, but he had also turned to imports for reselling as well. The sales of imported produce proved to be much more profitable than the sale of local produce and this rapid growth in business.

“After a while, I had to turn to banks to get more loans to grow and I decided then to register as a company CL Pullen Limited.”

This was March 2003. Still he said getting loans was not easy, as separate from the lack of track record, he was operating a farm — a business which banks shy away from. Yet, that business grew at a rapid rate, doubling in size over the first four years of trading and thereafter experiencing growth of approximately 25 to 30 per cent in each subsequent year, when compared to the previous year’s performance. With their sights set on onward and upward growth, the directorship made the decision to expand the breadth of their offering in new lines of products such as dairy and dry food.

“And then as the company grows, we get into trucks and more storage area. This increased our expenses and so we went into other products to spread that cost. So [we] went into apples and grapes and oranges and potatoes and then that grew even further. And as that company grew larger and larger, we brought my family members in and the company continued to grow until it became Everything Fresh Ltd,” Pullen added. That company was incorporated in October 2008.

Pullen said the company deliberately kept a low profile in the early years, but as it grew and needed capital to expand, he consulted his cousin Gregory Pullen about his options and was told to take the company public. That it did in 2018 when it sold 156 million shares at $2.50 each to raise $390 million. The funds have been allocated to increase inventory and the warehousing space to hold the goods as well as to purchase solar panels, which the company use to generate electricity to reduce costs as it adds more coldrooms and lessen its carbon footprint.

“Before we went public, many people had never heard about us and even more didn’t even know we were doing $2 billion in sales. A company that didn’t owe any money to a bank,” Pullen said.

He said after the company went public, a decision was made to take over a processing plant to produce various cuts of local beef and pork for the hotel sector. Everything Fresh had been importing the meat before for the same clients.

“That didn’t turn out to be one of the greatest successes for us, because as we were growing, [the] government changed [and] the policies changed as well.”

“I didn’t realise we could import beef duty free for the hotels. So that defeats the purpose of trying to do local, [even] though I had orders from the hotels for the local beef. As for the pigs, unless you [are] importing the feed along with the semen and using your own pig, it become very difficult to compete against the bigger boys,” he said.

Having shed the processing plant, Pullen said the company decided to return to its core business.

“The costs of the inputs for manufacturing are so volatile and unpredictable that you can’t plan,” Gregory Pullen added.

In the early days though, ahead of becoming a listed company, Everything Fresh’s biggest break came from the RIU Hotel chain in Jamaica.

“They came on board and they adopted us and would even advance us money, which to me was a very shocking thing,” Pullen recalled.

He said as the business grew and other suppliers to hotels started to expand their range of products, he had to do likewise to stay relevant.

But all that growth was to be stymied by the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus which wiped out 90 per cent of Everything Fresh’s business as the Government imposed an islandwide shutdown of economic activities in the hope that keeping people apart would stem the spread of the virus.

Pullen said while the company’s customer base dwindled, he didn’t lay off anyone and instead opted to rotate work on a weekly basis so that each employee could earn during the period.

“Although we were working one week on, one week off, I would say about 8o per cent of my team still worked, although they weren’t getting paid for that week,” he recalled. Pullen put the efforts down to dedication from his staff, demonstrated by the low turnover rate at the company, which has many of the employees from day one still on the roster.

“We grew retail at that time,” he said, highlighting the company’s pivot from its overreliance on hotels to take its produce. “We were expanding retail by about 200 per cent to 300 per cent by the time the hotels started to reopen,” he said.

With the pivot working, the company recovered from its pandemic downturn. Last year it sold $2.6 billion in goods and garnered $48 million in profit, a turnaround from the losses endured the year before.

“My projection for this year is a positive outlook,” Gregory Pullen, chairman of Everything Fresh, said. He pointed out that during COVID there was a rebalancing of the revenue ratios, whereas previously, the company was dependent on the hotel sector for 95 per cent of its income, now it’s about 60 per cent, with the other 40 per cent coming from the retail trade.

While not getting any business from hotels at the height of the pandemic, Courtney Pullen said he was preparing the company ahead of a return to demand from tourism interest especially with new rooms being built.

“So starting from August last year, we came to a decision to give up a rental space and expanded in the processing plant. We have converted the processing plant into more freezers and storage and move the food service division of the company to the plant we bought in Bog Walk to process meat,” Courtney said.

Pullen said that has resulted in a doubling of storage area and is awaiting the new rooms to be opened in the next year or two.

With that, the company is seeking to move growth in another direction.

Garret Gardner, the nephew of Pullen, who has worked only in the family business, is to take over the company’s operation in Kingston and will be responsible for growing the retail segment of the business.

“The Marcus Garvey Drive division will cover everything,” Gardner said as he noted that he doesn’t believe the company is tapping 70 per cent of its potential.

“We are supposed to be rolling out our frozen food lines with new packaging by the end of this month,” he added, saying the company will be bringing in new dairy lines and frozen food lines.

“On my end, I have more easier job pushing the food service,” his uncle Courtney pointed out. He said the aim is to cut into the market share of the more established operators who sell to hotels in the island.

“I can add a whole lot more range of goods when it comes to food service. We’re barely scratching the surface of what we sell in this area. For example, in seafoods. Have you seen the range of seafood that is imported by competitors like Rainforest Caribbean and Caribbean Producers Jamaica? The range is huge. We are probably not doing 10 per cent of that range. We have a lot of room to grow there to expand. Also, look at the frozen goods category like food and vegetables. We still have a lot of space to expand into that as well as for our dry goods.”

Pullen said the company is doing less than 10 per cent of the range of dry goods it sells.

“With all the new hotels coming in, I can guarantee you a beautiful two years this year and next year easily, even probably the third year after that.”

“As long as we continue thinking and looking ahead, making more changes now instead of waiting first, make the moves and the change now before it happens. So now we’re adding more goods we can get those for the next three years we’re in full expansion mode for the next three years.”

That expansion has come with a lot of sweat equity. Unlike most companies of its size which would have hired contractors to refurbish the processing plant in St Catherine, Pullen said the labour was done by himself and staff.

“We don’t mind getting our hands dirty. I don’t dig deep down like people and go borrow $100 million. I take small loans like $15 million and work with it to see how far it can go. From August until now, we have worked seven days per week building out this plant. My wife is at work cleaning bathrooms, mopping floors, cooking for the staff and we doing this caused our workers to respect us in a different way. If you want to call me tight or cheap or whatever, I don’t mind,” he added. In his company, Courtney says there are no specialists. Delivery truck drivers operate fork lifts in the warehouses and even desk-tied employees help to make deliveries.

Now as the company pushes to reap from the investment so far, Pullen looks to the future with hope.

“We have a lot of doors out there to knock. “We have a reputation of identifying needs. Our clients come to us to solve issues which they have elsewhere,” he said.