From Plenty via Gowanus Lounge.

Everybody knows that fruits and vegetables come
from the soil, technically—but, more pragmatically, they come from the
grocery store. Yet most people know more about how a seed turns into a
tomato than how that tomato appears in the produce aisle at 77 cents
per pound.

Behind the plump pomelos and
mouth-watering watermelons, inspecting the lettuce leaves and carrot
tops, is the unsung hero of the journey from field to plate: the
produce buyer. At the Park Slope Food Cooperative in Brooklyn, the
produce buyer is Allen Zimmerman.

The
bright-eyed and pebble-voiced Zimmerman, a lifelong Brooklynite and
former union organizer, brings a down-home New York City practicality
to providing for Park Slope’s sophisticated palates.

“One
of my responsibilities on this job is to eat. I have to taste things.
How could you sell a fruit without knowing how it tasted?” he says.
“The way I learned this job was hands-on. You touch the produce, you
smell it, you eat it.”