Rich Miles

"What separates produce people is their knowledge of the product."

Striding between pallets of tomatoes and bananas it's hard to miss Rich Miles' imposing figure. "Now don't blow it for me, I've worked a long time on this image," Miles warns as a broad smile lights up his face. A gentle giant of a man, Rich takes a lot of pride in his family and his work.

"I've got the best wife in the world," he beams. Gwendolyn was his high school sweetheart and 26 years later he still looks forward to her smiles. "She's the nicest person I've ever known. Cheerful, upbeat, just a lovely person."

Most of their married life Gwen has shared Rich with Consumers Produce, often rarely seeing each other as they worked opposite sides of the clock. When Miles came to Consumers Produce 23 years ago his produce experience was exclusively consumption. He joined the ranks of The Freshness Professionals as a sample man. "I set up the displays for the customers at night and made everything look beautiful."

Working from eight at night to the predawn hours were not easy and Rich was thrilled when he was promoted to filling customer's orders. "As an order man I was working from four in the morning until 12:30. That was cake, that was cake." It also allowed him to see his children, Damien (now 21) and Danya (now 16) grow up.

Over 15 years of picking out customer's orders, Rich Miles learned produce. He also grew to know his customers by their first names and take special pride in picking out their produce. "You have to know the product to do the job good. Any body can pick an order. If I didn't like it then I didn't try to give it to the customer. That was my criteria."

Like many of The Freshness Professionals Miles learned his trade from within the Consumers Produce family. "I worked real close with Phil Masesso while he was winding down toward retirement. He was letting me take some of his responsibilities." And with Masesso's retirement Miles moved into management, and now supervises the daytime warehouse operations.

Overseeing the warehouse and making customers happy from 5:30 in the morning until late afternoon Rich rarely takes time off. Nonetheless he has his dreams. "I want to go to Maine on my next vacation, 'cause I've never been there." While it has been a couple of years since Rich and Gwen took their last vacation, it was memorable. Their Las Vegas trip was winding down, with only a few hours until they flew home when Gwen wanted to try her luck one more time. Rich remembers, "She said, 'I'm on vacation and I've got twenty more dollars I want to spend.' I said, 'Do whatever you want to do, I'm staying right here in the room.' " A short time later Gwen was back. "She throws all this money down on the bed and says, 'Rich, I won!' " A thousand dollars in cash was a pleasant addition to the luggage for the flight home. "We were the only people on that flight that came home a winner."

A self-described "homebody who works and takes care of my family," Rich Miles says he has few outside interests. "I always worked the weekends so I don't have any hobbies." But he loves to sit back and listen to a very special kind of music. "I like jazz fusion, I like jazz."

If Gwen and Damien have their way Rich will soon be spending some time sitting on a creek or lake bank. " My wife and my boy are trying to get me to take up fishing. So I guess we're going to give it a try."

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