Bronx, New York-based commercial food distributor Baldor Specialty Foods, which entered the D.C. region market in 2012, has signed a lease for a 100,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility in Lanham, Maryland, that will support its plans to double delivery routes over the next few years.
Baldor is also hiring 100 workers, including drivers and warehouse workers.
Baldor, which pivoted to home food delivery amid plummeting restaurant sales during the early months of the pandemic, said the restaurant business has come back in a big way in the past two years, with unprecedented demand from the District and its other markets of Boston, Philadelphia and New York.
It also said corporate cafeterias are coming back online rapidly as employers bring workers back. Baldor’s customers also include neighborhood markets, retail customers, hospitals, schools and stadiums.
The Lanham warehouse and distribution center is in the Hargrove Industrial Campus, at 4450 Hargrove Drive.
Baldor recently hired Krenar Jusufi, previously director of automation and engineering for HelloFresh, who helped identify the location of the new operation based on logistics efficiency.
Baldor traces its roots to Balducci’s fruit stand in New York’s Greenwich Village, which opened in 1946.
In the 1970s, responding to growing interest in its fresh produce from restaurant operators, business partners Andy Balducci and Joe Doria created Baldor (a combination of their names) as the company’s wholesale food distribution business.
