 Hi, I'm Megan Humphrey, and I am the Executive Director of Hands, and our mission is to get food to older adults who are low income. And today with me is David Hirschberg, and he is a lifelong Burlington resident. And we are going to be speaking with him about his family's role in the food industry in Burlington, of which is a long history. And first we want to acknowledge that Native Americans lived on this land first, and others started to settle in Burlington in about the 1700s. So when did any of your family first come to Burlington? My mother came in 1898 as an infant from Lithuania. And my dad came as a 16 year old from Lithuania also, and he came in 1912. So they had no connection before? No, they didn't. And did they initially come right to Burlington, or did they stop other places? My mother definitely came here. My dad didn't come through Ellis Island for some reason. He came through the port of Philadelphia. But I think almost all of the Jewish families in Burlington came from a place called Kovna. Now it's called Kunis. And I think they came because the peddlers that were peddling in New York and both sides of Lake Champlain, they would write back to Lithuania saying, this is such a beautiful place. It reminds you of Lithuania. The cows look the same. The water, the green, the pastures, and it's a very free place. You can celebrate your religion without any Cossacks coming in. And so that's why almost all of the people, the Jewish community, at that time came from Lithuania. And I can certainly understand why people would all begin to settle in one area, come from one place. I mean that happens with many, many immigrant families, they end up settling. So your dad, how did he start in the food business? He was not educated. He came here at 16. And he got a horse and wagon. And he was a peddler. And that's how a lot of people, that's how a lot of tailors, tin knockers, leather people, roofers. They did peddling and they walked around the state. My dad had it better than most because most of the peddlers were carrying something on their back. He at least had a horse and wagon. So he only really worked during the good weather, like from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And then unfortunately, other than when he was working, he was a gambler. He loved high-stakes poker. So he was almost like, they were kind of referred to him as sunshine fruit because you only worked in the good weather and gambled during the bad weather. Because that's the lean time for money coming in, certainly. And we're in Burlington so that's a longer season too. A typical week for my dad was they'd leave on a Monday and they'd go up to the islands to South Hero. And in those days it wasn't paved. He told me it was like a muddy road. And they'd have to stay. There were no hotels or motels. And the Jewish peddlers had to stay in the barns. And that's when he learned poker because they all gambled all night long. And then he'd move on to Grand Isle and then North Hero and he'd wind his way back Friday to be back in time for the Sabbath. Wow. So that's a really big area because when you were talking about peddling, I was thinking it was much, you know, maybe a few towns around here. But that's a long way to go. Originally it was mostly in the islands. And he lived on St. Louis Street and he was just in a rooming house. And my mother's family lived across the street and he kind of had an eye for my mother. And she said, I'm not mirroring a peddler. So it kind of gave him, I don't know how long he peddled, but it kind of gave him incentive to sell his horse and wagon and to get a truck. And he opened up a little warehouse store on the corner of Uniskey Avenue in Grant Street. I think the Bernel family had a store there forever. And he didn't like retail. That was too small a time for him. So my mother's younger sister and brother kind of ran the store and he became the wholesaler. And he liked bigger dollars than paying five cents for a pound of potatoes or something. And he probably didn't enjoy being inside a building as much. It sounds like he was, you know, he wanted to be a moving around. So where, what was sold, either wholesale, was it all fruits and vegetables or was there other fruits? Yeah, it was fruit and vegetables. And so, and we're- I don't know much about the store, it's just that he told me retail was not his thing. And so he put them, but it didn't last very long, the retail part of it. The retail, yeah. So where did he get fruits and vegetables? I would imagine he would go to, well, mostly he would, when he could he'd always go to the local farmers. That's why I get a kick out of them talking about farm to table being this new concept. And he always, always supported the local farmers. In fact, even when we had the warehouse in my lifetime, although I never worked with my dad, but he had passed by the time I moved back to Burlington. He always used to say to the farmers, I know it's a long winter for you, so you leave something on the dock, you go in the office and get a check. So what would happen is one farmer would say to the others, if you want to get your cash on the barrel head, Louis Hirschberg pays cash. That's who you go to again. We were, we always had the best of everything because they knew they could get paid quickly. So he supported all the local farmers like the Mazes, the Burganties, Psy, Tracy. I was trying to think of a name of a guy at the mouth of the river who had a carrot farm, but I can't remember. But so, and then he would probably go to one of the local wholesalers like a Champlain Valley or a Vermont fruit, which was owned by the Fayette family, and probably buy- And get to fill in. Fill in, yeah. But he was a wholesale person as well. He was a wholesale. He would go farm to farm, store to store, and then later on, when he had the warehouse, then he started selling restaurants, and in those days, almost all of the restaurants were like, he was an immigrant, he came from Lithuania. Most of the restaurants in Burlington were Greek-owned, so that was what he did. So he was providing for the restaurants. But then he expanded beyond that, too, or your family did. He always had a good business, but he had some of the resorts, like Soul Basin Harbor, and there was a French school called Ico Champlain owned by the Chase family. And I think he probably played cards with a lot of those owners. He met a lot of the big, he hung out with a lot of these rich guys who owned businesses because he was a very personable guy. And so, but he ended up, you know, anybody, the Hotel Vermont was a customer, all the diners, restaurants. That's a lot. That's a lot of business. Yeah. And then, stores. A friend of mine was saying that there was a, that your family was also supplying fruits and vegetables for UVM for a while, at least for turnities. Yeah, but I don't think that was until, I think that was probably me. I don't know. I don't know if he ever got the University of Vermont. I don't know, or the hospital, but he's, but there were so many, there were, you know, the only really supermarket was Cullodenies. I think there might have been an AMP and maybe a Grand Union or something. But it was, and, but every little corner had a rest, had a store. Right. I mean, I think in Winooski, there were so many stores. In fact, one of his drivers, he turned him into a salesman because he could speak French and most of those owners in Winooski were French-speaking, so. And then, how did you get involved? Did you always want to work in that business? No, no, no. I was, I went to law school after UVM. And Judy and I moved to New Jersey because that's where she was from. And I was working for the Veterans Administration and we were handling claims. You'd sit at the table with a doctor and a business specialist and you'd rate the veterans and I was always in trouble because my boss was not a nice guy and he always kept saying, your claims are too high, you got to cut the veterans, I said that, I'm not going to do, that's not going to happen on my watch. That's right, right. I didn't get along well and then after a couple of years of battling all the time, I said to Judy, I'd like to move back to Burlington and I'll always remember what she said, you're my husband, where you go, I go. So we came back and my brother was less than thrilled because by that time it was just he and my mother and they didn't have a very big business and he said to me, I don't think this business is big enough. To support you. To support you, yeah. Because by that time I think I had three children so I said, well, I'll try to help make it bigger and he said, oh Mr. Big Shot, you don't even know a lettuce from a tomato but the first day on the job, he gave me a sales pad and said, IBM's been open for two or three years, see what you can do. So they only had I think 385 people. The employees there. At IBM and there was no security, there was no fence, I just drove my car around, rang the bell, two nice gentlemen came to the door, a guy named Hans Mueller who was the chef and a guy named Larry Gerlach who was the director of the food service and he said, where you been? We've been open for three years and I said, well, our family wasn't very aggressive it was just my mother and brother and they were selling who they were selling but I'm here now and if you'll give me the opportunity, I think you'll like what we sell because we have a good product. So he said, well, I'm buying from a local company and I'm not happy with them and if I give you an order when would I have it? I said, I'll be backing the truck up tomorrow at 6.30, he said, okay, here's a little order, let's see. So that's what he did and that's what I did and he looked at everything and he said, oh my God, this stuff is so much better than what we're getting. So as IBM grew, so did our company, it kept getting bigger. And then after a couple of years, they said to me, if we wanted frozen foods, could you help us? I said, for IBM, we'd build a freezer. So and then a little bit later, as they kept growing and we kept producing like we were producing and they were really terrific people to do business with and all we wanted was good quality. They never asked your price and I said, you don't have to worry about that because I'll treat you with respect and so we always gave them a good price. We always had a great product and then we started bringing in canned goods for them. We built an addition on the warehouse. So then we became a full service house and then we really, really started to grow and I was kind of the rainmaker because I was the outside guy and wherever I went, University of Vermont, the medical center, fancy restaurants, they'd all say to me, well, who's your biggest accountant? I'd say, IBM has been so kind to me. And so that's, we just kept growing and growing and growing and at that time, afterwards, I think Champlain Valley became more of a beer distributor, they had Schlitz beer, which was a big beer in the state of Vermont and the Fayettes kind of got out of the food business. So we really grew. Yeah. And that left some space for you. So where, you must have had a, where was the warehouse? Well, we, my dad had bought a warehouse, I think it was probably in the late 20s, down on the corner of King and Battery. It had been a railway express garage and he bought that and that's where we had our, so they're all the food companies right in a row. There was, we were on the corner of King and Battery and the next building down was the Fayettes and they were on the corner of Battery and Maple and then further down in the rail yards was Champlain Valley, they were on Champlain. So the three major wholesalers were all on Battery Street. And is, did some of the food come in by train? Is that why you were located down there? Well, the Fayette family were really big and they had a rail line that came right up to their door. So I think that's probably why they were down there. We used to send a truck or my dad would go down when he was alive three mornings a week to the Medan's Market in Albany and he would buy up the load and then the truck would go down and pick it up and by the time he drove back to Burlington and by the time the truck got there, he probably had most of the load sold to the different restaurants. So what was, do you have an earliest food memory? Can you remember anything from being a kid? Well, I remember when I was a kid I used to go with my dad to the different farmers to pick up stuff or they could always use an extra hand helping deliver or unload the truck when it came in from the market and when I had my first jalopy at the age of 16, he had a gas pump down there so he allowed me to go down and fill up the car with gas so yeah, we would hang out there once in a while. Yeah. And so, I guess something about it. But my older brother loved, he was always, always wanted to be in that business and the younger brother always wanted to be in that but I had no thought about it at all. That's interesting. So was your younger brother ever involved in it? Well, he was when my dad died but he didn't get along with the older brother and nobody else did either so he left, he was in Boston and when I came back and we started to get really successful, the younger brother called me and said, you think there's room for me to come back and I said, you're family and my mother said of course there's always room because she was, my mother really got involved in the business later on because they needed someone to take care of the books because my dad, you know, it was his little piggy bank and a poker player and it's not a good thing so it became, the business became stabilized once my mother got there taking care of the books and the money but my father was pretty devious, he would sometimes have the wholesalers on the market send my mother dummy bills and she'd pay the bills and they'd give him the cash and so he had a sickness, I mean, it was, he loved gambling. And that's hard on your mom because she's thinking she's... Yeah, she was a great shooter and a playing gal and expected you to work hard, I mean, you know, I get a kick out of the teacher saying how hard it is now with the parents always coming in and complaining about, you know, you're not treating junior properly and our generation, the teacher was always right so my mother said don't ever complain and so if I misbehaved in school or something my mother always took the teacher's part so it's a little different than it is today. So when you went to a farm to pick up the food was it packaged already or did you have to clean it? Well, I remember Tracy's corn was always in bags, the carrot farmer was always in bags and the mazes, you know, they would, the mazes would bring it right to the warehouse, Sam Mazza was a very handsome man, he was a wonderful guy and he would bring strawberries or whatever right to the plant. Blueberries were an interesting thing, they were no cultivated blueberries in those days but my dad made a connection with a farmer over in upstate New York, a fellow named Louis Joubert and they had blueberries like a couple of months a year and I think we were the only ones that had this connection and we had chains from Springfield, Massachusetts and all these different places calling and saying could you bring down a load of blueberries because it was kind of unique in a short season so he always, he was a very personable guy and he made these connections and we loved it because a couple of times a year the farmer had a huge family and they'd bring us over and we'd have like a Sunday dinner that was sumptuous, it was amazing, so those are always fond memories of these big farms and that and that connection with them and then when we got to a point where we were too big for the Manan's market then we started sending a trailer of our own with our own driver and we got a broker so we weren't actually on the market like my dad was, we had a broker who was doing the buying force and they'd send the and our trailer would go down and pick it up and down to when you say down to Boston so that really expanded it and then sometimes we would we would bring in a load of potatoes we would share it with one of the other wholesale distributors because I was thinking when you were talking about blueberries I was wondering if one way to make to make yourself stand out was to have something different that another wholesaler didn't have but it's also interesting that you would share things because that also makes sense well we were very very friendly with the Fayette family they were a wonderful family and and in fact when they were going out of business the brothers went around to the different customers that they had and they said you know the Hirschberg boys are doing a good job and after they went out of business they had like Freddie Fayette had a big family I don't know eight or nine daughters or whatever was they would come down and buy big boxes of oranges and apples for the kids so we were very friendly not so much with the Champlain Valley family that was we were never close with them but that was a little more competition yeah well it was different yeah that was different interesting so when how old were you when you started working with your family when you came back came back in 1962 so I was 30 years old so had you worked when you were younger when you were younger kid were you part of you know I would help sometimes with deliveries or unloading trucks but the two other brothers that were in the business when from the time they were young they always like hanging out at the warehouse or going on the road with some of the salesmen that was I was too busy playing football and basketball and that wasn't my thing right um boy we've gone we've gone over a lot and so what what would a typical day be of yours at work once you started or is there no such thing no some days we'd go in like when my younger brother came back he didn't get along with the older brother so my mother and I thought it'd be a good idea to keep him on the road so he did amazing he went up to Franklin County and we had not done anything and he got a lot of the stores up in Franklin County but the most amazing thing was he went up to Stowe and in those days nobody was going lodge to lodge right and Eddie went every single he knocked on every door and they said you're going to deliver right to our door that's amazing so that was and even the mountain company he said to him we'll even we'll even get our truck close to your lift so we can put it on the on the oranges and apples on the chair and take it up to the mountain so Eddie did an amazing job getting almost every single account on the mountain road because he would say no to that exactly great service to get a wholesale price right right but I think in the old days there was a IGA store down in the village of Stowe and I think before we started knocking on every door they had to come down to that that's where they were getting it you know getting paying a retail price so here Eddie's knocking on every door and we're delivering twice a week you know with fruit and produce and frozen foods and right can good so he did that's another big market then for you so that was a huge market so did you ever look back and say it was was ever regret about coming back and working with the family business never well the relationship with the older brother he was difficult he was I mean the family would probably still own it and it just got to a point where I said to my mother you know this isn't no matter how much we're doing it's this isn't working so the younger brother and I cashed out and the older brother really couldn't run it without us so nine months later he sold the business which is now I mean the roots of that business are now owned by Cisco because it passed a few hands there were two guys that my brother sold it to and then they sold it to some guy from Maine and unfortunately he got into a horrible car accident and couldn't run the business and the family were hot dog people and didn't want to run that so I think they sold the Cisco and now Cisco is the big I think yeah Cisco is probably the largest food distributor in America I would think I don't know yeah because that that truck is everywhere and they do a lot of big but there you know there are other but I thought I was out of the once we got out of there we did other things but then I got a call from the guy from Black River Produce that said they're having trouble breaking into Burlington and Mark said would you come to work for us because everywhere we go they say you gotta call David he's the guy that owns Burlington right so I went to work for my thought would be a year and it was a long time and they got really really big and they just got bought out so and I don't and I think the Cooper family owned Bob Cooper owned Burlington food and they got bought out so I don't think any local people the original the original people yeah I think right I mean the Fayettes are gone the Lumbra's are gone there's nobody and Bob Cooper is not he's still alive but I don't think he owns he doesn't own the business so they were all bought by major companies so when you see these trucks performance or Cisco or US food they're those aren't local right and it's interesting because I've heard you say that your dad didn't know how to read and write at the beginning but then he ended up owning this very large he couldn't multiply things he was really a smart guy I think if he would have had an education you probably wouldn't have gone into the food business but you know he couldn't yeah he came here at 16 didn't have any schooling but he was he was a hard worker and he worked really hard to make that happen for sure which is which is a story for many people who came came to America and for our family and for me in particular I had a nice place to come back to because living in New Jersey wasn't my favorite thing we went there because Judy's family was really close and she wanted to you know and that was fine but she's loves Burlington and and she had a great career at the University of Vermont and she's been one of the stalwarts of our synagogue forever so you know it's been a great glad you came back I am too and the reason we're still in our house is that the kids keep saying you're not going to sell the house are your grandpa well we probably should have sold that long ago but we're where we are and that's where that's where we'll end up that's great but thank god during the COVID we weren't in a retirement home right right no that's good I'm glad you're at your home thank you so much this was really really interesting and I appreciate it and the people in Burlington have been wonderful to our family but IBM is really has was the key for me personally because they they opened up every door because people had such respect and so the university was terrific to us the medical center all the fancy restaurants so that's great we had a good run well it's good and you earned that reputation so thank you that's good it was uh I never felt like I had customers I always felt that they were friends and that's that's the way it worked out I mean we had so many Asian restaurants because one of the restaurants taught me phonetically how to count to 20 and I had a list of about 20 and so every time a new Asian restaurant would come in they'd say if you go to David right he could speak Chinese I couldn't speak Chinese right but they would they would like their orders be called in at 10 o'clock at night and they'd play mahjong all night long so Judy's saying here you struggle in college in Spanish and here you're taking orders from Chinese restaurants at 10 o'clock but but um a priceless to something I never needed it was just a thing built on friendship and trust and so you respect people who respect you and so it was a good run that's great yeah well thank you very much thank you for having me