Do You Know Mr. Mango?
A few weeks ago, I received a frantic text from a friend: “Just found out Mr. Piña is closing.” They had stopped into the Williamsburg Korean greengrocer for one of their “three to seven” weekly visits when the cashier broke the news: The building had been sold. “These fuckers have no mercy!” they added.
This was no ordinary grocery crisis. Mr. Piña is part of the chainlet — incorporated as Kipico, Inc. but which I and everyone I know calls Mr. Fruit — that’s locally famous for its discount produce. But of course, if you live in north Brooklyn, you’re probably already a member of Mr. Fruit’s cult.
The stores, ten of which are sprinkled across Kings County, are like deluxe bodegas, known for their produce but just as likely to sell a variety of prepared foods, Korean pantry goods, and slightly more upscale snacks. Mr. Mango provides Fort Greene with flowers and two for $1 oranges. Mr. Kale is Crown Heights’s premiere source for bulky $1 Napa cabbages. Mr. Beet, on Smith Street, keeps boxes of dragonfruit tucked across from its coolers. Another Mr. Kiwi, on Fulton Street, recently introduced a bibimbap bar for the shoppers popping in for cherries ($1.99 a pound) and Annie’s mac ’n’ cheese (also $1.99).
People get attached to the shops, and Mr. Piña’s closing in Williamsburg was, for its fans, a cataclysmic event. “It’s heartbreaking because that was the best one,” says Aiyana Leong Knauer, a onetime regular. “They have cans of that fancy tuna on sale. They would have bags of pretty good coffee on sale. The last time I was there, you know Anna’s, the Swedish ginger-snap cookies? They had those” — you guessed it — “on sale.”
The Mr. Fruit story began off the Myrtle-Broadway subway stop across the street from another Brooklyn landmark, Big Boy Deli. In 2007, a Korean immigrant in his early 30s named Joon Yoon, who had been working in a Woodside grocery store, opened Mr. Kiwi with his brother Jun. It exists in calm contrast to the chaos of the intersection, a full display of produce spilling outside its door: crates stuffed with cilantro, boxes filled with mangos, and more. “They had the best selection of stuff and we could use food stamps to get fresh juices,” remembers Knauer, who lived in a punk house close by at the time. “In addition to dumpstering, it was the way that we fed ourselves while making close to no money.”
When, about ten years ago, the stores started to multiply, Brooklynites took notice, and many wondered: What’s the deal here? Finding good produce at a good price is, even now, something of a novelty for people used to shopping in the city’s distressingly mediocre grocery stores. What secret did the Fruit Brothers discover that distinguishes their markets from the competition?
To start, the group is now run by five brothers, in addition to their numerous employees. “Our produce team and myself go to the Hunts Point Market every morning at 2 a.m. and fight” — figuratively — “to buy the freshest produce with the best deals,” says John Yoo, an operations supervisor who has been with the company since it was just Mr. Kiwi. The overnight hours are a chaotic time at the market, with “hundreds” of trucks loading and unloading, and Yoo is there early because they need all of their stores stocked by noon. He does this every weekday, which raises the question: When does he sleep? “I get a thousand phone calls from the stores after, so I don’t take a nap,” he says. “I’m up 24 hours a day.”
In the past, Yoo and other emissaries of Mr. Fruit had said they benefited from deep ties to vendors at the market. Now, Yoo says they use size to their advantage: “Since we have more than ten stores, we have buying power and we can get stuff a little cheaper than anybody else.”
The actual design of the shops is another key: Outside produce, the stuff spilling out onto the sidewalk, is a loss leader, used to draw people in to buy the other, (slightly) more expensive stuff in the store. (Though there are also discounts found inside.)
Lauren Ro, who wrote about the stores for Lucky Peach in 2016 (and is now a colleague of mine, at the Strategist), told me how difficult it was when she had to move away from one of the Mr. Fruits after becoming accustomed to having one nearby: “It was very hard to leave Mr Coco behind. He was a constant in my life.” As the years have gone by, Ro and Mr. Coco have drifted further apart. “I do feel bad about not ever checking in on the Mr. Fruits. I occasionally see stores while driving around Brooklyn and I feel ashamed that I don’t even know whether they are authentic members of the family or are imposters.”
Detractors may say that the Mr. Fruit shops are really just stores where neighbors can buy produce for slightly better prices and the same sort of products (probiotic drinks, Harvest Snaps) that are found at other stores among gentrified Brooklyn. This is true, to some degree, but the Mr. Fruits are also just better version of this retail genre. “They’ve really designed it so that, when you walk in, everything that you need is kind of there,” says another fan, Gus McKay. “They seem to have done their homework, and that’s what appealed to me — I don’t even go into other delis for some reason.”
The key, regulars say, is to understand the Mr. Fruit shopping experience: Take some time to pick through what’s on offer, unless you want moldy berries. Then, crucially, do not exercise that same patience when it’s time to eat, which will be “immediately.” Those berries are discounted for a reason. For some people, this is a concern they air on Yelp or Google Reviews. For others, it’s part of the deal. Madalyn Summers, a bar manager who lives in South Slope, says that being willing to pivot while planning dinner is critical: “I’m going to go in there and they’re going to have fucked-up romaine and wilted-ass containers of Earthbound arugula,” she says. “But, I can get a bunch of watercress that’s bright and fresh and delicious looking.” From there, it’s just a matter of asking herself: “Do I want to fuck with watercress right now?”
The flexibility offers freedom: “It’s like a surrender— shopping there means I am opening myself up to whatever Mr. Fruit is telling me,” Knauer says. Usually, she goes without a plan, and bases her meals around whatever looks good at Mr. Lemon. “I’m just like, I’m just going to go with whatever the fuck is on sale, whatever there’s a good deal on.”
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