How 1M honeydew melon balls go from the Bronx to the US Open

It’s no easy match making tennis treats.

For Jared Walton, the US Open means two weeks of waking up at 3:30 a.m. to ensure more than 1 million honeydew balls and other fresh produce are ready to go.

Walton, director of national accounts for Baldor Foods, said he gets to the company’s Bronx facility by 4:30 a.m. each morning, “before all the crowds arrive,” to pick the day’s fresh produce.

Then it’s all loaded — to the brim — onto at least three and sometimes five trucks.

“Our goal is to be there in line by 6:30 just ‘cause there’s limited loading dock space,” said Walton, pointing out he’s competing with other distributors off-loading everything from plastic goods, frozen treats and ice at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, Queens. 

“We’re all jockeying for positions.”

And it’s so worth it.

Among the produce Baldor Foods supplies to the Compass Group, which handles dining during the two-week long US Open, are heirloom tomatoes for the Caprese salad, potato rolls — and tasty honeydew melons that grace the famed Honey Deuce drink.

According to Walton, at every bar at the Open, there has to be a stockpile of honeydew balls for the ever-popular Honey Deuce — a signature tournament drink since 2006, when one bartender created a cocktail with Grey Goose vodka, raspberry liqueur and lemonade, garnished with a skewer of honeydew melons in the shape of tennis balls.

“This cocktail has been just growing,” said Walton, who has been serving the event for the past 15 years, noting a growing number of tennis fans are also trying to get their hands on the signature drink cup that features the current year and names of previous winners.

Somehow, the $22 cocktail price doesn’t seem a deterrent.

Walton said 1.5 million melon balls have been created for this year’s event, after more than 405,000 cocktails were sold last year.

Walton didn’t hazard a guess at many orders for the honeydews he got this year — “we fill a lot for them” – but bartenders at the Grey Goose bars lining Arthur Ashe Stadium say they never seem to have enough skewered honeydew balls to meet the demand.

“We have the drink, but we don’t have the melon balls,” one bartender told the Post, explaining they have an entire backroom of workers doing nothing but skewering the treats.

At first, the bartender, who did not give his name, said workers would leave at 5 p.m.– just when the dinner rush was beginning.

“After the first couple days of me being like, ‘We can’t keep up with it,’ they actually extended the hours and created a second shift,” he said.

Still, bartenders may still have to skewer up to 15 buckets full of melons on their own as feverous tennis fans clamor in line for the drink, he pointed out.

To meet the insatiable US Open demand, Walton said he starts prepping almost as soon as the prior year’s event is over.

“It takes a year to plan it,” he said, adding even before the annual Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day “we have to fill the entire stadium with product.”

They have to not only ensure they have enough crates and plastic wrap to transport the produce all the way from the Bronx to Queens, they also have to order all of the locally-sourced ingredients for the event, he said.

At the same time, Walton said he’s got to keep his other clients happy as well — including corporate cafeterias and hotels — taking their orders, negotiating prices and helping them with menu planning and delivery times.

“Each delivery’s unique and each order’s unique,” he said of delivering perishable food in one of the nation’s busiest cities.

Walton said one employee has to go through World Trade Center security every day to deliver fruits and vegetables to the top floor.

The company also delivers fresh fruits and vegetables from its Bronx headquarters all the way to Maine and Virginia, serving 13,000 customers, while the other half of Baldor Foods supplies produce to 75% of New York City’s Michelin Star restaurants.

Getting ready for the US Open, which has drawn more than 880,000 fans each year, is just the “little honeydew on top of everything else we do,” Walton said.