Effective 1 July, Levitt Foods will act as Santa Monica Seafood’s new national retail broker, the seafood supplier’s CEO Roger O’Brien announced on 25 June.
Dave Litle, Santa Monica Seafood’s recently-appointed senior vice president of business development, will oversee the partnership with Levitt Foods.
“Santa Monica Seafood has been focused on its growth of the retail channel, and with the addition of Levitt Foods to our already strong retail team, this positions us for expansion into new market places,” Litle said of the new arrangement.
A national sales and brokerage company, Levitt Foods represents a wide range of processors and distributors across varying protein markets – including beef, pork, poultry, and seafood – who work with major and independent grocers throughout the United States. The firm’s president and CEO Art Levitt has over 40 years of experience within the meat and seafood categories, interfacing directly with numerous regional and national retailers, at first as a meat cutter until working his way up through top-tier leadership. The past 17 years have seen Levitt Foods establish a national sales team “focused on store level product placement and execution, using a consultative partnership approach for growing sales for both retailers and manufacturers,” according to a press release deployed by Santa Monica Seafood’s this week.
“Adding Levitt Foods will keep with our focus of growth into new geographic territories and building new business opportunities while enhancing the services and advice we can provide to our existing retail accounts. This is a change in our servicing approach but one that has been internally embraced by both our ownership and leadership teams,” added Santa Monica’s O’Brien.
Santa Monica Seafood has been in business for 80 years as a privately-owned company. It is considered to be the largest specialty wholesale distributor and processor of fresh and frozen seafood in the Southwestern United States, with over 200,000 square feet of facility space across 12 locations in California, Arizona, Nevada, Illinois, New Mexico, and Texas.
