Pretty-in-pink tomatoes

Lyubomir Mlekanov’s day begins long before the other residents of his village have their first cup of coffee. The mid-June sun rises early in Malo Konare, in the Pazardzhik Province of southern Bulgaria, but Lyubomir gets up even earlier. At 5.30 a.m. he checks the drip irrigation for his tomatoes in the pink greenhouse. At the bottom of the plants, the first tomatoes, still green, have begun to form and acquire a colour, and on the stem, the yellow leaves  of new fruits are already appearing. 25 June is approaching, a big day for the 41-year-old man. It is the day on which he will deliver the first shipment of a tonne and a half of ripe tomatoes to the METRO store in Plovdiv.

The wholesale store is only 20 kilometres away, but the road Lyubomir Mlekanov has had to travel to make his delivery in this first season was long – it started more than a year ago, in the spring of 2018, when he first met the METRO Bulgaria team that handles purchasing of fruit and vegetables for the country’s 11 wholesale stores and that has worked on the ‘Nurtured with care in Bulgaria’ project for almost 2 years.

It is a novel procurement model that is based on a direct partnership with Bulgarian small farmers such as Lyubomir Mlekanov. They sell their products to METRO stores in their region without intermediaries. With this initiative METRO Bulgaria responded primarily to the needs of its customers in the food service industry. ‘Our aim is to become a link between the local producers of Bulgarian fruits and vegetables and their professional customers in the hotel and restaurant business,’ says Ivan Raynov, who manages the product category of fruit and vegetables at METRO Bulgaria.

What makes the model special is that the products are delivered straight from the field to the nearest store. ‘Our goods arrive fresh because only a few hours have elapsed between pickup and arrival at the store,’ says the 30-year-old. This means: the tomatoes from Lyubomir Mlekanov’s farm do not travel hundreds of kilometres and do not pass through various warehouses and trucks for days, the way other tomatoes do. They reach the shelf within 60 minutes. ‘That’s why we can offer products in our assortment that have a very short life but incomparable taste – for example, the pink tomato, which is super aromatic.’

The project began in 2017 and became known internally as the ‘Fruit & Veg Revolution ’ at METRO Bulgaria. Preparations were intensive. ‘During the first 6 months we were constantly on the road. We travelled at least 40,000 kilometres, as much as the Earth’s circumference,’ Ivan Raynov recalls. He and his team criss-crossed the country, and meetings with small producers followed one after the other. The trip was organised with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and local organisations of farmers from the different regions. ‘There was a song rolling in my mind; one by Willie Nelson,’ the METRO manager says. ‘On the road again.’

Today METRO Bulgaria’s range of fruits and vegetables includes more than 300 kinds of local products, supplied by over 150 small farmers across the country. In the last year, over 4,300 tonnes of fruits and vegetables were sold, including Bulgarian varieties – from tomatoes and cucumbers to onions and peppers through to cabbage, beans and many others. The selection of regional fruits is just as impressive.

The products are offered according to a fixed schedule, which is determined by the time the farm products are grown and harvested during the season. ‘Garlic is on the shelves in March and April, and radishes too. Onions arrive in early March. Greenhouse production of cucumbers begins in February, and of cabbage in April. We start selling strawberries in the same month, and potatoes and courgettes follow in May. The pink tomato is available from June until late September.’

METRO Bulgaria supplies all key customer groups, including the independent traders (Traders) as well as service providers and other independent market participants (SCOs). The most important engine for the growth and successful development of the company with its over 2,200 employees, however, are the hotels, restaurants and catering businesses (HoReCa). The hotel and food service industry is expanding fast, especially in the big cities and tourist centres along the Black Sea coast and the regions that are popular amongst hikers and skiers, in the Pirin, Rila, Stara Planina  and Rhodope mountains.

METRO Bulgaria offers HoReCa customers not just products but also a range of solutions to advance their business. The fruit and vegetable range is designed in such a way that it contains a variety of types to satisfy any culinary desire. Ivan Raynov and his team sell not just one type of tomato. They offer one tomato variety for salads, another one for sauce, another one for pizza, one for home cooking, one for barbecue, one for canning and even one for decoration purposes. They all have in common an authentic taste which brings the restaurateurs and their guests closer to traditional Bulgarian cuisine again. Many consider this to be the unique feature of METRO Bulgaria in comparison to other traders.

‘We are confident in what we offer, because we draw on the knowledge of experts in breeding varieties of sorts and seeds,’ explains the METRO manager. They include scientists from the Maritsa Vegetable Crops Research Institute and from the Agriculture University in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city after Sofia, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. But advice from leading Bulgarian chefs contributes as well. ‘Our suppliers also go through training and professional consultation from agronomists to make sure that we always achieve the best quality,’ says Ivan Raynov.

Plovdiv, 20 April: head chef Andrey Stoilov, President of the Bulgarian Association of Professional Chefs, is onstage to award the winners of the biggest contest for professional chefs in Bulgaria. For over a decade, METRO Bulgaria has been the main sponsor of the event, organising a sort of local store where the chefs of the competing culinary teams can select the products and ingredients for their dishes, among them many of METRO’s own brands as well as regional food products. ‘METRO has always supported me and has been a reliable partner for me and my colleagues, all of them restaurant owners and hoteliers. “Nurtured with care in Bulgaria” is an initiative that contributes to our success,’ says the head chef of Marinela, one of the country’s largest hotels. He appreciates the quality and taste of local products, which as far as he is concerned make all the difference in the kitchen and on the plates. ‘That’s why I prefer to work with Bulgarian products – and I know that I can count on METRO for this.’

There will also be a celebration in the name of the tomato. On 15 September, METRO Bulgaria will be holding its Pink Tomato Fest in the centre of Sofia for the third year in a row. Regional farmers participating in ‘Nurtured with care in Bulgaria’ can present their best pink tomato specimens at a farmer’s market. The festival provides professional chefs and lovers of good food with the opportunity to prepare and taste Bulgarian dishes with all sorts of local products such as the characteristic white and yellow cheeses offered by METRO. This will be accompanied by a full day of music and dancing on the stage in the Knyazheska Garden.

Lyubomir Mlekanov has had his own stand at the festival in the past – and definitely wants to participate again this year. But until then he first will have to focus on what is most important to him: bringing his pink tomatoes straight from the field to the METRO store in Plovdiv – making not only the restaurateurs in Bulgaria happy but also himself.