A South Bend-based food distribution business with decades-old operations in Bloomington and ties to local entrepreneur Charles Beasley is shutting down and eliminating 200 jobs.
Filings with the state indicate that Raydia Food Group plans to close the Bloomington plant, at 4863 W. Vernal Pike, on Nov. 26, along with plants in Mishawaka and South Bend.
The plants combined employed 200, but a breakdown wasn’t immediately available. Pam Zarazee, the company’s vice president of human resources, did not reply to a voicemail.
State filings show the South Bend operations employed at least 135, while the Bloomington plant employed at least 35.
Some of the Bloomington employees were represented by the Teamsters union in Indianapolis, but the local president was traveling and not available for an interview.
Jerod Warnock, vice president of Teamsters Local 364, which represented some of the South Bend workers, said some of the workers had left their jobs already, though about 20 remained on the job in South Bend as of late last week to load and unload trucks as well as drive products to local customers.
Warnock said the business primarily delivered food supplies to smaller grocery stores and restaurants as well as some institutional clients such as schools or jails. The Bloomington plant formerly supplied the Monroe County Jail, but has not done so in about five years.
According to HT archives, the local plant formerly was part of Beasley Food Service, which Charles A. Beasley started in the 1960s, initially using one truck to service such Bloomington restaurants as Ladyman’s and the Hour House.
According to local property records, Beasley and his Wife, Marjorie, had owned the 12-acre Vernal Pike property since 1997. It was assessed this year at $3.8 million.
Beasley sold the business in 2002 to Florida-based Syndicated Food Service for $7.5 million. At the time, the local business generated about $19 million in annual sales and employed 75, distributing food in Bloomington, Indianapolis, Evansville and Terre Haute.
Beasley stayed on as general manager and, according to a West Lafayette High School website entry by his wife, retired in 2008. According to that page, Marjorie Beasley also worked for the business and had retired in 2006 “after a 35-year career working as the Food, Nutrition & Environmental Services Director at Bloomington Hospital.”
Syndicated Food Service sold the Bloomington business to Troyer Foods in 2007, which, according to the Goshen News, was founded as Troyer’s Poultry in Vandalia, Michigan in 1948 and acquired by Case Farms in 1988.
Goshen-based Troyer merged with South Bend-based Stanz Foodservice in 2022, “becoming the Midwest’s largest and most respected independent foodservice distribution company,” according to a new release from 2024, when Stanz-Troyer announced it would operate under a new name: Raydia Food Group. That same year, Raydia bought B&B Foods in Terre Haute, but closed those operations early this year to consolidate them with facilities in northern Indiana, according to the Terre Haute Tribune-Star.
The demise of Raydia surprised customer Tracy Bruce, who co-owns Bloomington’s Scholars Inn Bakehouse.
“Very puzzling,” said Bruce, who worked for Beasley and Troyer for about 25 years, including as director of sales.
The merger of Stanz and Troyer made sense, he said, because Troyer supplied primarily independent grocery stores while Stanz supplied mostly restaurants. The idea, Bruce said, was that during an economic downturn, the combined companies’ restaurant business might decline, but the grocery store business would improve, whereas during an economic boom, higher sales to restaurants would be more than enough to offset declining sales to grocery stores.
However, Bruce said, the food distribution business has slim margins and is especially susceptible to rising prices for electricity — needed to refrigerate the foods — and fuel, needed to deliver the food.
Bruce said Raydia recently also made a software change and had some significant challenges doing even simple things such as invoicing. He said he sometimes would go to the facility to pick up an order of carrots or milk, and Raydia would not even have an invoice available when he arrived.
Bruce said Raydia did not provide a lot of the Scholars Inn ingredients, and he has switched to another one of his suppliers, but he said having a local distributor provided easy access, especially in a crunch.
“I will miss the convenience,” he said.
Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Former Beasley Food Service plant in Monroe County to close in November
