When London’s food businesses talk about sourcing from a supplier based at New Spitalfields Market, it is worth understanding what that actually means. The market is not simply an address. It is the UK’s highest turnover horticultural market, a purpose-built trading infrastructure that handles millions of pounds of fruit and vegetables every week, and the place where buying decisions are made in the hours before most of London is awake.
For any trade buyer evaluating a wholesale produce supplier, knowing how New Spitalfields Market works, and why a supplier’s presence there matters, is the most direct way to understand the quality and freshness of what arrives at your door.
New Spitalfields Market is a 31-acre wholesale fruit, vegetable, and flower market in Leyton, East London (E10 5SL), owned and administered by the City of London Corporation. It opened in May 1991, purpose-built after relocating from its original site near Bishopsgate where traders had operated in increasingly congested conditions on public roadways.
By every measure, it is the leading wholesale produce market in the UK. It is home to 115 traders offering over 15,000 products from more than 100 countries of origin. Fifth and sixth generation family firms trade alongside newer businesses that have brought specialist knowledge of African, Asian, and Eastern European produce to the market floor. The result is a breadth of range that no single supplier working outside the market can easily match.
In November 2024, the City of London Corporation confirmed that New Spitalfields Market would not be part of the proposed move to Dagenham Dock. While Billingsgate Fish Market and Smithfield Market are set to close, New Spitalfields continues as London’s primary wholesale hub for fruit and vegetables.
New Spitalfields Market is a trade-only wholesale produce market. It is not open to the general public. Access is for registered trade buyers and market tenants.
For food businesses looking to source from the market, the practical route is through an established wholesaler with a presence there. A trader like Montgomery Wholesale, based at the market since it opened in 1991, acts as the buyer on behalf of their trade customers; sourcing, grading, and delivering to London food businesses who do not have direct market access or the operational setup to buy at wholesale volumes in the early hours.
The market operates through the night and into the early morning. Trading begins before dawn, which is when the best buying decisions are made and the freshest lines are secured.
New Spitalfields operates on an early-morning trading rhythm that defines the quality of produce available to London buyers. Wholesalers arrive at the market before dawn to inspect stock, negotiate with growers and importers, and secure the best of what has arrived overnight from UK farms and international suppliers.
Buying early matters. The first buyers on the market floor have access to the full range at peak condition. Lines that have travelled from Spanish growing regions, Sicilian citrus growers, or Yorkshire forced rhubarb sheds are at their best in those first hours after arrival. A supplier who buys at dawn and delivers next-day ensures the minimum possible time between harvest and arrival at a London kitchen or counter.
The market’s facilities support this process directly: cold storage rooms, ripening rooms, and palletised racking allow produce to be held at the correct temperature and ripeness stage between purchase and delivery. Security across the site is provided by the Market Constabulary.
The scale of New Spitalfields Market’s range is what makes it genuinely useful for premium London trade buyers. A food hall or farm shop that wants to build a display around Sicilian Blood Oranges at their seasonal peak, early English asparagus from Staffordshire, and an ultra-rare Japanese Yuko citrus variety in January needs a supplier with access to all three from a single market floor. That is what New Spitalfields provides.
Our seasonal produce calendar reflects the range as it moves through the year at New Spitalfields. The market’s 115 traders include specialists in every category: soft fruit, stone fruit, exotics, British seasonal lines, and the specialist citrus that defines the winter buying season for premium retailers. No single supplier buying outside the market has access to all of this in one place.
New Spitalfields is not just a trading floor. The infrastructure on site directly affects the quality of produce that reaches a buyer’s door.
Cold storage rooms allow temperature-sensitive lines to be held correctly between arrival and delivery rather than sitting in ambient conditions. Ripening rooms mean stone fruit, avocados, and other climacteric produce can be held to a specific ripeness stage, so buyers receive product that is ready to use or display at the right moment rather than all at once. Palletised racking supports efficient handling and reduces the bruising that comes with unnecessary manual handling.
These are not incidental features. They are the reason produce bought at New Spitalfields at 4am can arrive at a London food hall or restaurant kitchen that morning in the condition it left the grower.
Montgomery Wholesale has traded at New Spitalfields since the market opened in 1991. Over 30 years at the same market floor means supplier relationships that took decades to build, market knowledge that cannot be acquired quickly, and a buying team that understands the seasonal rhythms of produce with the kind of depth that only comes from sustained daily presence. Our January market report is one example of that knowledge made practical: growers we know, varieties we track, and seasonal windows we plan around months in advance.
For trade buyers in London, the practical outcome of that market presence is next-day delivery of produce sourced at dawn, from a fruit & veg wholesaler who knows what arrived overnight, what is at its best right now, and what is worth securing before it sells out.
If you are a London food business looking for a wholesale produce supplier with direct market access, four generations of buying experience, and a next-day delivery route to your door, we would like to hear from you. Get in touch with the Montgomery Wholesale team today. We are always happy to talk produce.
Phone: 020 3833 9174
WhatsApp: 020 3833 9174
Email: orders@montgomeryswholesaler.co.uk
Sign up to the Montgomery Wholesale mailing list.
Produce waste is a margin problem before it is anything else. In a London restaurant, hotel kitchen, or food hall, every piece of fruit or vegetable that leaves the building uneaten or unsold represents real cost: the purchase price, the labour used to receive and store it, and the lost revenue it could have generated.
The good news is that the decisions driving most produce waste happen at the buying stage, not in the kitchen. Ordering behaviour, sourcing choices, and the relationship between buyer and supplier are where the largest gains are made. This guide sets out six practical levers for London food businesses looking to reduce produce waste without compromising quality or range.
The single most effective change most London food businesses can make is to increase ordering frequency and reduce order volume. Produce deteriorates from the moment it is harvested. The longer it sits in storage, the more of it becomes unusable before it reaches the plate or the counter.
Next-day delivery from New Spitalfields Market makes frequent, smaller orders entirely practical for London buyers. Rather than a large weekly delivery that fills cold storage and then deteriorates unevenly over seven days, two or three smaller deliveries across the week means produce arrives closer to the point of use, holds its quality, and wastes less.
This approach also gives buyers more flexibility to respond to changes in demand. A quieter trading day does not turn into a waste problem when the next delivery is only 48 hours away.
Off-season produce has travelled further, spent longer in cold storage, and arrived with less of its natural shelf life intact. A line sourced from the other side of the world in February will not hold as well as the same line bought at its domestic peak in August. Ordering in line with a seasonal produce calendar is one of the most straightforward ways to reduce early spoilage and improve the eating quality of everything on the menu or counter.
Seasonal produce bought at peak quality also tends to be more consistent in size, ripeness, and appearance. Inconsistency in the incoming product is one of the main sources of kitchen waste. When buyers work with the season rather than against it, less product arrives in an unusable state.
A product’s technical shelf life and the window during which it looks genuinely good on a counter or a plate are not the same thing. Soft fruit may be safe to eat for five days in cold storage but presentable for display for only two. A food hall buyer relying on shelf life dates to manage stock will regularly find product that is safe but unsellable.
Understanding display life for each line, and ordering quantities calibrated to that shorter window, is a more accurate way to plan. Ask your fruit and vegetable supplier how lines are graded for retail versus catering use. Display-graded produce, packed crate-to-counter, is selected for appearance and ripeness stage rather than just technical shelf life, which means less of it becomes dead stock before it moves.
Every additional touch point between delivery and use introduces the risk of bruising, deterioration, or contamination. A supplier who packs for food halls and farm shops specifically. packing crate-to-counter and agreeing ripeness stages in advance. means produce arrives ready to merchandise or cook at the right moment rather than all at once.
Ripeness staging is particularly relevant for lines like avocados, stone fruit, and bananas where the window between underripe and overripe is short. When a supplier understands your operation and stages delivery accordingly, you are not receiving a batch that all needs using on the same day.
Waste does not begin at the kitchen door. A significant proportion of produce deterioration happens in transit, in holding depots, and in intermediate storage before the product reaches a buyer. Operating from New Spitalfields Market, Montgomery Wholesale buys at dawn and delivers the same day or next day across London. The supply chain is short by design. Our March market report covered the shift from Spanish to Dutch peppers and aubergines when Spanish yields tightened. A shorter, more responsive supply chain allows exactly that kind of switch without buyers sitting on stock that is no longer arriving in consistent condition.
For buyers assessing suppliers, asking where product is sourced and how long it has been in transit before delivery is a reasonable and productive question. The answer directly affects how much shelf life remains when it arrives at your site.
Lines finishing their season become harder to source consistently. Quality drops, pricing becomes erratic, and buyers who have not been warned find themselves sitting on stock that degrades faster than expected. Our January market report flagged exactly this for Finger Limes and Kaki fruit. both winding down rapidly. Buyers who received that alert could run down their stock at the right moment rather than over-ordering into a deteriorating season.
A supplier who actively communicates what is coming and what is finishing gives buyers the information they need to make ordering decisions that protect margin. This kind of forward visibility is one of the most practical tools for managing waste across a produce range.
Our monthly market report goes straight to subscribers’ inboxes every month. It covers what has just arrived, what is at peak, what is finishing, and where we are sourcing from. For any buyer managing a produce range across a hotel, restaurant, or food hall, it is a practical reference point for planning orders and avoiding the overstocking that leads to waste.
Sign up to the Montgomery Wholesale mailing list.
For any buyer stocking a food hall counter or farm shop shelf in London, the seasonal calendar is not a nice-to-have reference, it’s the foundation of good range planning. The right line at the right moment of the season commands a premium, drives footfall, and tells customers you know what you are doing. The wrong line, or the right line ordered a week too late, leaves gaps and wastes margin.
What follows is Montgomery Wholesale’s month-by-month guide to seasonal produce availability as it arrives through New Spitalfields Market. A fruit and vegetable wholesaler in London for over 30 years, it covers the lines that matter most to premium London trade buyers: named varieties, origin, and the commercial windows that reward those who plan ahead.
January and February are the months of the connoisseur. The festive rush has passed, but the buyers who know their market recognise that winter brings some of the most coveted and time-limited lines of the entire year.
Seville Oranges from Spain arrive in January and the window is famously short; rarely more than three to four weeks. Their high pectin content and intense bitter profile make them the essential ingredient for home marmalade-making. Farm shops with a home-preserving customer base should secure volume early; supply does not wait. Alongside them, the first Sicilian Blood Oranges of the Moro variety begin arriving; deep-pigmented, volcanic in provenance, and a high-margin choice for juice bars and premium retail displays.
Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb from the historic Rhubarb Triangle arrives in candlelit sheds, producing vivid pink stems with a refined sweetness that field-grown rhubarb cannot match. It is one of the few truly British luxury lines of the winter season. Specialist citrus – Buddha’s Hand, Bergamot, Cedro, and the ultra-rare Yuko – also land in January, giving food halls a point of genuine difference on the counter.
Stored British roots and brassicas remain at their best: Savoy cabbage, celeriac, parsnips, and leeks from Lancashire and Scotland are still in strong supply and eating well after the frost.
March marks the transition. Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb finishes, but English field rhubarb from Cheshire growers arrives to take its place; vibrant, pink-hued, and well-suited to retail displays and modern dessert menus alike.
The headline arrival of March and April is English Asparagus. The first spears are weather-dependent and volumes build slowly, but the commercial opportunity is significant. English asparagus commands a premium that imported alternatives cannot justify, and buyers who secure early allocations lead the market. Based on supply arriving through New Spitalfields, the season typically runs from late March through to June.
Italian Datterino and San Marzano tomatoes reach their quality peak in early spring; deep flavour, perfect acidity, and a clear story of Mediterranean provenance that resonates with food-literate shoppers. Dutch strawberries arrive in March, offering an early taste of summer luxury before the British season begins. Purple sprouting broccoli, a genuinely seasonal British line, is at its best before it finishes in April.
English asparagus reaches its peak in May and early June, the single most commercially significant domestic produce window of the spring season. Buyers who have not already secured supply should act immediately at the start of May. The season is short, demand is high, and late allocation requests are regularly disappointed.
British strawberries begin in earnest from Staffordshire and Cheshire growers. The El Santa variety in particular offers exceptional flavour and shelf appeal. Broad beans, courgettes, fresh peas, and English lettuce from Lancashire all arrive through May. British-grown basil comes into season, offering a domestic alternative to Dutch and Spanish greenhouse supply. Morel mushrooms, foraged and available for a short window, are worth securing for food hall buyers catering to a premium chef customer base.
Summer is the highest-margin display season of the year. British soft fruit is at its peak: raspberries, cherries, gooseberries, redcurrants, tayberries, and loganberries create extraordinary counter displays and command prices that reward buyers who have planned their sourcing in advance.
Stone fruit arrives from the Continent and beyond; peaches, nectarines, and apricots at their seasonal best. British sweetcorn, harvested from late July, is a perennial high-volume seller. Heritage and vine tomatoes hit peak quality in August; this is the moment to showcase variety and provenance on your display. Runner beans, fennel, and courgette flowers for buyers serving premium restaurant trade are all available through the summer months.
Garlic, both wet and dried, is in plentiful British supply from July. Buyers should note that Muscat grapes, which have strong seasonal demand, begin to wind down towards the end of August.
Autumn brings a shift back to British roots and brassicas, alongside some of the most visually striking display lines of the year. Crown prince squash, butternut squash, and pumpkins provide the display theatre that farm shops and food halls rely on through September and October. British apples and pears – Cox, Bramley, and Conference – come into season, offering provenance that resonates strongly with farm shop customers.
Wild mushrooms arrive in September: ceps, girolles, and chanterelles from British and Continental foragers. These are premium lines that justify premium positioning. Celeriac, swede, and parsnips from Lancashire and Staffordshire return with the first frosts. Radicchio from Italy – bitter, structural, and visually striking – is at its seasonal peak and well-suited to the discerning food hall buyer looking for something beyond standard salad leaves.
The final stretch of the calendar is defined by two things: the quality of British roots and brassicas after the frost, and the planning required to keep shelves stocked through the busiest trading period of the year.
Brassicas eat at their absolute best from November onwards; Brussels sprouts, Savoy cabbage, red cabbage, and kale from Lincolnshire and Lancashire are at peak sweetness after the frost has done its work. Sage spikes sharply in the run-up to Christmas and supply can tighten quickly; buyers should secure volume by mid-November at the latest. Spanish clementines and satsumas are arriving in volume through November; leafy Clementines in particular are a high-visibility, high-turnover line for farm shop and food hall counters.
December also marks the return of the citrus season. Spanish Navels hit peak sweetness, juicing oranges from trusted European growers are in strong supply, and Blood Oranges from Sicily begin their return. Buyers who have not confirmed their festive delivery schedules by early December risk gaps at the worst possible time.
This calendar reflects the seasonal patterns as they arrive through New Spitalfields Market but availability, quality, and pricing shift week by week depending on weather, growing conditions, and supply. For live updates on what is arriving, what is at peak, and what is about to finish, our monthly market reports go into the detail that a seasonal overview cannot.
Subscribing to the mailing list is the simplest way to receive each report as it is published.
For buyers supplying food halls or farm shops, we are also happy to discuss your seasonal range planning directly. Our buying team knows what is coming before it arrives, and that knowledge is most useful when shared early.
Planning ahead is what separates a good seasonal display from a great one. If you want to talk through what is arriving this season, set up a standing order for a key line, or simply find out what is worth securing right now, get in touch with the Montgomery Wholesale team today – we are always happy to talk produce.
Phone: 020 3833 9174
WhatsApp: 020 3833 9174
Email: orders@montgomeryswholesaler.co.uk
Choosing the right wholesale fruit and veg supplier is one of the most consequential decisions a food hall buyer, farm shop owner, or independent grocer will make. Get it right and your displays are consistent, your customers notice, and your margins are easier to manage. Get it wrong and you spend more time firefighting supply issues than running your business.
This guide covers the six things worth examining before committing to a supplier, drawn from over 30 years of working with trade buyers across London.
London has more than one wholesale produce market, and they are not all equivalent. The market a supplier operates from determines how early they can buy, which growers they have access to, and how quickly produce moves from harvest to your door.
Montgomery Wholesale operates from New Spitalfields Market in east London, one of the UK’s principal wholesale produce markets, handling significant daily volumes of fruit and vegetables from British growers and trusted importers. Buying at dawn, directly from the market floor, means produce travels the shortest possible route before it reaches your counters.
When evaluating any supplier, ask where they source from, what time they buy, and how long the cold chain is between purchase and delivery to you. These are not abstract questions, for perishable produce, the answers directly affect shelf life and display quality.
Restaurant supply and retail supply are fundamentally different. A kitchen needs produce that performs when cooked; a farm shop or food hall needs produce that looks outstanding on a counter for six to eight hours, holds its appeal across the trading day, and gives customers a reason to pick it up.
That requires a different kind of grading, different pack formats, and a supplier who thinks in terms of display life and shelf appeal, not just unit cost. Before committing, ask whether the supplier actively works with businesses like yours. Ask to see how produce arrives: is it crate-ready for fast merchandising, or will your team spend an hour re-grading every delivery?
A supplier who genuinely understands retail formats will have clear answers to both of those questions.
Fresh produce does not wait. A supplier who misses a delivery window, delivers in the wrong condition, or cannot scale up at peak periods will cost you more than their prices save. Reliability is the single most important operational criterion when choosing a wholesale supplier in London.
Before committing, establish the following: what are the delivery windows and are they time-banded to your trading schedule? How is the cold chain maintained between market and your door? What happens at Christmas, Bank Holidays, or periods of high demand, can they guarantee the same level of service?
At Montgomery Wholesale, next-day delivery is available across London, with routes and timing built around the requirements of retail and food hall operations. For full details on coverage and charges, see our delivery information.
Volume lines such as potatoes, carrots, onions, salad leaves keep the business running. But specialist and seasonal lines drive footfall, support premium pricing, and give your display a point of difference that customers remember.
A good wholesale supplier covers both without requiring you to source from multiple places. This means reliable everyday availability alongside lines that create a story on your shelves; the specialist citrus arrivals in January, the first English asparagus of the season, the heritage tomato variety that your food-savvy customers will seek out by name.
Ask any prospective supplier how they handle specialist and seasonal lines. Do they source proactively, or reactively? Do they alert you to what’s coming in before it arrives? The answer tells you a great deal about the quality of the relationship you will have.
There is a meaningful difference between a supplier who can tell you what is available today and one who can tell you what will be available in three weeks, why a particular line is running short, and which alternative is worth considering in its place. That kind of knowledge comes from sustained presence in the market, not from a price list.
Montgomery Wholesale has traded for over 30 years as a fourth-generation family business at New Spitalfields Market. That heritage is not decorative, it means our buying team knows the seasonal rhythms of produce in a way that takes decades to develop. We know when to secure volume early before supply tightens, and when to hold off because quality will improve in a fortnight.
When you are evaluating a supplier, ask them about the season ahead. If they can speak fluently about what is coming, what is going, and what the quality picture looks like over the next month, that is a strong signal. If the answer is vague, it should give you pause.
Before opening an account with any wholesale fruit and veg supplier in London, work through this checklist:
Make sure it fits your weekly volume, particularly in quieter trading periods.
Confirm your postcode is within their standard delivery area, not subject to additional charges or restrictions.
Online portal, phone, email, WhatsApp; know your options and how late you can adjust.
Direct relationships matter more than you might expect when you need something quickly or something goes wrong.
Weather events, grower shortages, and import delays are part of wholesale produce. Ask how they communicate issues and what they do about them.
A supplier who works well with farm shops or food halls will be able to point you to customers in the same sector.
If you found this guide useful, our monthly market report goes further. Subscribers get it straight to their inbox every month, covering what’s just arrived, what’s coming into season, and what’s about to disappear. It is the simplest way to stay ahead of the wholesale market and keep your range looking its best.