The mangoes were supposed to be here two hours ago.
Yakin Shah paced the parking lot of a cargo warehouse at Newark Liberty International Airport, beads of sweat moistening his scruffy beard and clouding his aviator glasses. His fingers clutched a stylus, obsessively swiping his phone for any update that his precious fruit had cleared customs.
He awaited 800 boxes of mangoes that had flown in the night before from a warehouse in Pune, India, with a stopover in Dubai. Nearly all had been presold to customers and stores in the area through Swadesi Mangoes, Mr. Shah’s side gig when he’s not running a convenience store in Kearny, N.J.
But when the mangoes finally arrived, he saw that they hadn’t been refrigerated. Condensation from the delicate fruit had soaked the perforated boxes, and several had been crushed in the tight confines of the shipping container. The golden kesar mangoes from Gujarat, known for their shiny hue, were discolored and spotted. The Alphonsos, an ultra-sweet breed from Maharashtra, were mushy.
The air smelled of sweet nectar and burned rubber, of primal ripeness on the edge — an intimation of the allure and risk involved in bringing India’s most prized fruit to its eager diaspora.
The business is brutal. Mangoes are fragile, and the window to sell them is vanishingly short. The customers are finicky and demanding. Profit margins are slim. And the competition can be ruthless — nowhere more so than in New Jersey, home to one of the nation’s largest populations of Indian immigrants, and to dozens of importers who have turned Indian mango season, which runs from around April to late June, into a free-for-all.
A decade ago, there were a handful of players, said Shrungi Panchel, who co-owns Dil Mango More. Now, she said, as many have discovered the ease of getting an importing permit — all you need is an L.L.C. — the field has become crowded with traders, most of them doing business as a seasonal side hustle.
“It’s cutthroat competition,” said Arjun Jadeja, who operates A1 Mangoes in Fairfield, N.J., when he’s not running a manufacturing plant. Importers say their peers often drastically lower prices at the last minute to undercut rivals or get rid of spoiling fruit. Some dealers bad-mouth another seller’s fruit. Others misrepresent which region of India their mangoes come from.
The business model works, for the most part, because demand is high and importers can move large volumes at low prices. But this year has been particularly tough, with President Trump’s tariffs, an early monsoon season in India and a temporary shutdown of one of that country’s gamma irradiation facilities that sterilize mangoes. Newark Airport has been plagued in recent weeks by canceled or delayed flights, resulting in spoiled produce.
Why would anyone want to gamble so much for so little reward?
“We are doing it for the love of mangoes,” said Mr. Shah, who estimated he makes $2 to $3 in profit, if he’s lucky, on each of the 10,000 boxes he sells in a season. “None of us make that much money.”
Most of the mangoes imported to the United States come from Mexico, where they are typically sold to stores for less than $10 a box. Just 3 percent arrive from India, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, selling for about $30 to $50 a box — as much as $8 per mango. The fan base for Indian mangoes is fervent, and many are willing to pay any price for a taste of nostalgia.
“It is not a rational purchase,” said Kaushal Khakkar, who runs Kay Bee Exports in Mumbai, the largest exporter of Indian mangoes to the United States. “The mangoes are available from other countries at a fraction of the price than what India offers, but people get reminded of their childhood memories when they consume Indian mangoes.”
Mangoes from other countries “don’t taste the same,” said Dipan Anarkat, an I.T. manager who was ogling the Indian mango display at a branch of the South Asian grocery chain Patel Brothers in Hamilton, N.J. “It’s like buying a BMW versus buying a Honda Accord.”
Apoorva Reed, a software engineer in Mountainside, N.J., said he has spent $300 to $400 at a time on mangoes, preferring the fragrant Dasheri breed from northern India, which reminds him of the mango trees at his grandparents’ home.
“To be honest,” he said, “I don’t even look at the prices.”
A few decades ago, the United States didn’t even allow Indian mangoes into the country because of concerns about invasive pests. President George W. Bush lifted the ban in 2006 to enhance trade with India, permitting the importation of mangoes treated with irradiation. Today, India’s growing export infrastructure includes several irradiation facilities monitored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (Other mango-growing countries, like Pakistan or Bangladesh, don’t have such robust support, making exports harder.)
One voice loudly lobbying against the ban was Dr. Bhaskar Savani, whose company Savani Farms imports a minimum of 50 to 60 tons of mangoes each season, mainly to New Jersey and surrounding states. The rest of the year, he runs a chain of dental clinics.
Dr. Savani was one of the first importers in the country after the ban was lifted, and many of his earliest customers are now his competitors. “I see a lot of sharks,” he said. “But it is OK. At the end of the day, people are getting mangoes.”
Dr. Savani himself has been accused of sharklike behavior. Two years ago, he and his partners in the dental company were charged in a federal indictment with Medicaid fraud, visa fraud and other crimes. He has pleaded not guilty, and a jury trial is scheduled for September.
But he said the outcome won’t affect Savani Farms, which operates separately from the dental clinics. “Even if they kill me,” Dr. Savani said, “I will still do the mangoes.”
Colorful boxes of the fruit are stacked halfway to the ceiling of Bhavik Mehta’s garage in Edison, N.J. By day, Mr. Mehta works as an I.T. specialist. But at all hours, customers show up at the garage to pick up mangoes.
He and his competitors sell them by the box, primarily to individuals and Indian grocery stores. He tried to get his mangoes into larger retailers like Costco, but was told their price is too high and their shelf life too short — especially compared with Mexican varieties like the Tommy Atkins, he said.
Even selling in the Indian stores can be tricky, Mr. Mehta said, as many stores show no loyalty to individual importers, often pitting them against one another to get the lowest price. Most of those stores also allow customers to return boxes of Indian mangoes for refunds, even if just one fruit has spoiled — a policy that doesn’t extend to other produce. The stores than charge the importer, Mr. Mehta said.
“Why do you think a store that does volumes of business can’t import themselves?” he said. “They don’t want to assume the returns.”
Still, some store owners said they’re not making money on Indian mangoes.
At Patel Brothers, whose 60 locations sell a total of about 2,000 boxes a year, Indian mangoes are loss leaders, meant to draw customers in to buy other, higher-margin items, said Margi Patel, a manager of a few New Jersey locations. The stores absorb the cost of returns rather than billing importers, she said, and customers bring back mangoes “every single day.”
It has occurred to some importers that they might fare better if they worked together. Last year, Mr. Mehta’s associate, Shyam Kabaria, asked Mr. Jadeja’s company, A1 Mangoes, to partner with their business, Simply Mangoes, so the two could cover a larger area.
“They didn’t see it like that,” he said. “They thought we were coming in trying to steal their business.”
Fed up by all the competitiveness in the field, Mr. Kabaria left the company. “Everyone used to be friends,” he said. “Now they aren’t.”
Mr. Khakkar, who runs Kay Bee Exports in India, believes there is plenty of business to go around. As the Indian American population grows, “I would not be surprised if the market size doubles every three to five years in the U.S.,” he said.
Yet some New Jersey importers have accused Kay Bee of trying to create a monopoly over Indian mangoes in the region by asking them to sell Kay Bee’s mangoes under a different name. (Mr. Khakkar denied this.)
Mr. Shah, of Swadesi Mangoes, wants to create a New Jersey mango syndicate that sets a minimum price for the fruit. As new importers come in seeking to sell mangoes as inexpensively as possible, the biggest loser is the farmer, he said.
“This whole competition has also gone all the way back to India, where even farmers are not able to make enough money for the amount of the mangoes they are selling.”
Until that syndicate forms, Mr. Shah has enlisted his own coalition — a rotating cast of cousins; his wife, Anuja Shah, and their 4-year-old son, Neev, who all help load and transport the fruit.
“During the first shipment of the season, my son and I used to come just to sniff the mangoes,” said Ms. Shah, an executive at Goldman Sachs.
At the Newark airport, the group spent hours filling the rental truck beneath the hot sun, then one of Mr. Shah’s cousins began the deliveries, driving slowly down Route 10, a few mangoes shoved into cup holders.
The first stop was a Subzi Mandi grocery store in Parsipanny, where they rolled dozens of boxes into the store on shopping carts, then deposited them unceremoniously on the floor to sit under the glare of fluorescent lights. There was no fancy display or large, colorful sign awaiting the mangoes — just a small piece of paper taped to the window listing the prices.
A cashier trained her gaze on the slapdash stack of fruits, whose honeyed aroma had made its way to the registers. They’ll be gone in a matter of days, she said.
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Priya Krishna is a reporter in the Food section of The Times.
The post It’s Indian Mango Season, and the Cutthroat Selling Frenzy Is On appeared first on New York Times.
