About Us

Max Tobias

Sam Mided

Sam Mided began working in the produce market during the Great Depression. His father-in-law, Max Tobias, helped him get the job. Max was an apple salesman for Greenberg and Tockman, one of the larger produce houses of the time. Sam earned a reputation as a good, hard worker and that reputation kept him employed throughout the Depression and the World War II era that followed it.

Shortly after the end of World War II, Sam decided to go into business for himself peddling fruits and vegetables and servicing small stores and restaurants along his route. He wanted his new company to seem bigger than the one man show it was, so he used both of his initials and named it S & M Produce.

Except for a few years in the early 1960’s when his brother-in-law, Abner Hesser, partnered with him, S & M Produce remained a one man show. By the late 1960’s, peddling was no longer a viable way to earn a living and the company was transformed into a jobbing wholesaler serving restaurants and grocery stores. More than half of the customers were Korean or Chinese.

Frustrated by the lack of Asian fruits and vegetables in the Chicago wholesale produce market, Sam resolved to start a market wholesale company to meet that need. Starting in 1970 and joined by Sam's two sons, Adam and Don, S & M Produce began selling a complete line of Asian specialty produce in Chicago's South Water Market. Initially, S & M Produce was its own best customer since much of what it received was destined for its off market, jobbing, customers.

However, the market was rapidly changing. In the 1970s Americans began to eat in restaurants more frequently. Salad bars were a popular feature and that brought a large surge in demand for snow peas, bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts. Alfalfa sprouts were S & M Produce's first non-Asian specialty item, but they were soon followed by many others: radicchio, porcini mushrooms, cilantro, jicama, Belgian endive, Dutch hot house peppers, etc.

By the 1980s the company had undergone another complete transformation. The jobbing business was abandoned because it competed with the company's market customers, most of which were themselves jobbers. S & M Produce became a wholesale market company selling a broad line of produce specialties from around the world.

In 1997 Sam's grandson, Lance, became the company's Chief Operating Officer. Over the previous 17 years he had worked in every other job position in the company. That experience served him well as he took on the task of planning the company's future and orchestrating the move from South Water Market to the new Chicago International Produce Market.

G. W. Produce, a well respected, long established South Water Market wholesaler merged with S & M Produce in January, 2003. G. W.'s strong base in the vegetables favored by Central and Eastern Europeans brought a new dimension to S & M's specialty base.