New Jersey Fresh Fruit Trucks

New Jersey Fresh Fruit in The Land of the Deep Fryer

Words By Jason Nark. Courtesy Of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In the land of deep fryers, where back bays flow with fudge and the ice cream rolls at you in waves, Bill Baxavaneos cuts through the calories each morn­ing with two simple words and a dinner bell, “Fresh fruit!”

For three decades now, drivers for Island Produce have parked colorful pickup trucks all over Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, and North Wildwood, hawking healthy food options on streets where the fruit’s mostly served on top of pancakes. It’s a tradition once common in inner cities when everything from ice to meat was sold from trucks, and according to new accounts, it may be making a comeback in some food deserts.

Wildwood Healthy Food Options

Along the coast of Jersey, the New Jersey fresh fruit trucks appear to be unique only to Wildwood. Wildwood is more of a food forest, dripping with cheese and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

“I haven’t seen them anywhere else, Says Dave Mayer, Island Produce’s owner. “I think there used to be a couple up in Avalon years back.”

Mayer, who started the business 1n 1989, said all three towns work with him to allow the trucks to operate but there are strict lo­cal ordinances. He can’t serve coffee, which people ask for, or prepare the New Jersey fresh fruit and veggies he sells. He can sell you a watermel­on, but he can’t slice it up at the truck. If you want a smoothie, you have to drive to the rehabbed ga­rage Mayer operates as a market and his truck depot on Park Boulevard near Ot­tens Harbor in Wildwood.

Before Mayers trucks hit the road in 1989, other colorful produce trucks used to ramble around Wildwoods, setting up shop by the beaches.

Just before 8 am on a recent weekday at the garage, drivers were busy loading the New Jersey fresh fruit and vegetables in the wooden racks Mayer built into the beds of the trucks, which are of­ten painted in bright pinks and purples.

“Just load up and head out,” Mayer told an em­ployee in the garage.

Mayer, who’s retired from the borough of Wild­wood Crest, employs ap­proximately a half-dozen drivers who divvy up routes among the three towns. He works back in the garage with his daugh­ter Katie, who is also a life­ guard. Baxavaneos, a Lower Township resident, is in his fourth year and as the veteran of the bunch, he gets the best route – Wildwood Crest.
He wasn’t in a rush.

The last thing Baxava­neos loaded into his truck was his lunch, a small tub of peeled shrimp. He brings Mayer a Starbucks coffee and Mayer gives him shrimp. The Ford pickup Baxavaneos drives are the plainest of the bunch – white with a few dings in the paint- and he’s thwart­ed Mayer’s attempts to slather it in bright colors each year.

“He really likes purple. I told him I refuse to drive a purple truck,” Baxavaneos said. “I told him, ‘If you want to paint it yellow, maybe lime green, we can talk.”

Sometimes Baxavaneos trains the younger drivers but said success in the fruit truck is mostly about being personable. “It takes a bit of effort,” Baxavaneos said in the truck. “If you don’t put in the effort and talk to peo­ple, it can be tough. It can be rough on hot days and when it’s raining it makes it really rough. We do better when it’s hotter.”

Teaching them how to ring the dinner bell isn’t so easy. Most of them just whack at it. “It takes a certain rhythm,” he said.

This day was a toss-up, muggy but overcast, and at the first hotel, the Adven­turer Oceanfront Inn, Baxavaneos’ rhythmic clanging and “fresh fruit” wail at­tracted no buyers. People like to sleep in on days like this.

At the Attache Motel, one man from Connecticut stood and marveled at the truck while a father and daughter from Pittsburgh inspected some peaches. They had a garden back home and were missing it.

“Fresh fruit? Are you kid­ding?” Brian See, 42, said. “I love it.”

At the doo-wop-themed Aztec Motel, owner Adamo Pipitone, 65, came out to greet Baxavaneos. Some­times Pipitone will let Baxa­vaneos use the bathroom and give him a free cup of coffee. “It’s so unique, ” he said. “People wait for the trian­gle bell, and sometimes I’ll come out and treat my maids to some fruit.”

Baxavaneos said cherries are the top seller, the perfect thing to bring to the beach. They sell for $4.99 a pound and come from as far as South Africa. The tomatoes, obviously, are local, as is most of the produce, though Mayer said he does buy from wholesalers in Philadelphia if he has to.

Baxavaneos has learned that seagulls don’t like grapes, at least not the old ones. They spit them out, and unlike on the board­walk, the birds don’t dive bomb the wooden roof on the truck that’s been loving­ly repaired and painted several times over the years. “I didn’t build that,” he pointed out. “Dave did”

Healthy Food On Morning Glory Avenue

On Morning Glory Avenue, just off the beach, Suh Gruppuso, 44, of Monroe Township in Middlesex County, just finished a four­ mile run, dripping in sweat. She used the fruit truck as motivation to sprint out to the end. “I ran four blocks to find you,” she said. “Give me the ripest bananas you got.”

Nancy Bouselli, 69, of Woodbridge was up on the balcony of her condomini­um having coffee when she heard Baxavaneos ring the bell. With a team of sleep­ing dancers in the condo resting for a competition
at the convention hall, she hurried down to load up. I’m thinking, “What was that?’ ” Bouselli said. “I grew up in Newark and this wasn’t uncommon back then. They had fish trucks, bakery trucks, ice trucks, you name it.” Bouselli dropped $22. “My kids are all big fruit eaters, they’re not junk eat­ers,” she said.

But alas, in the Wild­woods, junk is unavoidable and acceptable on vacation. It’s best to wear elastic pants and hit the gym hard when you get back unless you’re a kid.

“You’re going to eat an orange?” Laura Beven, 38, of Hamburg, asked her son with suspicion as they sat on a bench, by the beach.

On this cloudy day, Cole Bevan, 6, wanted the real deal, an honest-to-good­ness piece of New Jersey fresh fruit, not deep-fried on a stick, at the junk-food capital of the Jersey Shore. He’s a lifesav­er for every parent who worries about the dental visit come September. “Do you have any orang­es?” the boy asked Baxava­neos.

“I sure do,” he replied.