Spokane-based Peirone Produce Co. is planning a $20 million warehouse expansion that's expected to help the company extend its service area to Washington’s West Side, a business move that would follow in the footsteps of its parent company, URM Stores Inc.

“URM has moved over to the Seattle side, across the Cascades,” says Peirone Produce President Brent Shammo. “We haven’t found those profitable anchor stores yet to be able to do that, but we’re almost there.”

To be able to take on customers in western Washington, the produce supplier is adding nearly 47,000 square feet of additional warehouse space to its West Plains facility, at 9818 W. Hallett Road.

Work on the expansion project is expected to begin in late July or early August and take about a year to complete.

The Peirone Produce facility currently has about 55,000 square feet of warehouse space and 20,000 square feet of office space. While the expansion will give Peirone just over 120,000 square feet in total, the addition will be taller than the existing structure, adding more vertical storage.

“That allows us more inventory space to fill,” Shammo says. “Right now, this building can hold about $2 million of inventory. With the expansion, it’ll be more like $8 million.”

With Peirone Produce’s facility expansion and the coinciding increase in inventory, the hope is that the produce supplier will be able to serve West Side chains that URM currently serves, Family Foods and Town & Country Markets.

“If we were to try to take them on right now, we wouldn’t be able to do that,” Shammo says of Town & Country. “We’re trying to make it so that we can grow with how URM’s growing.”

Peirone Produce focuses primarily on retail produce, selling to grocers including Yoke’s Fresh Market, Rosauers Supermarkets, Huckleberry’s Natural Market, Super 1 Foods, Family Foods, Harvest Foods, and Town & Country Markets, among others.

“Basically all the main customers that URM has, we are their produce arm,” Shammo says.

In addition to Peirone Produce, Spokane-based URM also owns Rosauers, which includes Super 1 and Huckleberry’s. The company also consists of a food service division, convenience and grocery division, and six URM Cash & Carry stores.

URM is a wholesale cooperative, meaning it is owned by its member-customers.

While URM meets some of Town & Country’s nonproduce needs, the supermarket chain currently sources its produce from a company in Portland, Oregon, Shammo says.

He projects that Peirone Produce’s sales could increase by 40% to 50% if all goes according to plan with the expansion, and the company becomes the produce provider for grocers on the other side of the mountains.

That would follow years of steady growth for the produce company.

In 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Peirone Produce reported $109 million in sales. That figure rose to $120 million in 2020, then $132 million in 2021, $139 million in 2022, $146 million in 2023, and $155 million in 2024. Shammo projects sales of $162 million this year.

The pandemic had a significant impact on Peirone Produce’s growth, he says, just as it did for URM.

“Everybody was going to the grocery stores again,” he says. “All the restaurants were shut down.”

While growing, Peirone Produce’s current service area has fewer opportunities for additional growth. URM co-op members already use Peirone Produce for 88% of their produce needs in the service area, which includes Eastern and central Washington, northern Idaho, western Montana, and northern Oregon, Shammo explains.

While the company could expand further south or east, there are fewer big cities in those directions, compared with Washington’s West Side, he says.

Shammo expects Peirone Produce will fill up its added inventory space quickly if it is able to successfully integrate into the West Side market. He contends that because of population differences, a five-store chain in the Seattle area can do as much in sales as a 20-store chain in Eastern Washington.

Peirone Produce currently has about 130 employees. Shammo doesn’t expect to need to hire many new employees immediately following the expansion, as the added space is likely going to improve efficiency.

That could change, however, if Peirone Produce gains some big customers on the West Side and a third shift is added.

As the company’s customer base grows, it would have to add more trucks, Shammo adds.

The added space will also have a positive impact on Peirone Produce’s existing customers in the Inland Northwest.

“Because we’re a co-op, we have to take care of all of our customers,” Shammo says. “We don’t have the space to do that right now. This will allow us to bring in about twice as many different items for the grocery stores around here, and it will allow us to carry extra inventory of the fast-moving items.”