Baldor Specialty Foods works with more than 1,000 partner farms to supply the food items people need most — delivering to restaurants, retail, wholesalers, corporate food service, schools and hospitals.

Like most in the food industry, things have drastically changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve pivoted our business overnight because we were affected so much by the restaurants closing, so we needed to reinvent ourselves,” said Diane Marques, merchandiser manager for the Bronx, NY-based company. “Within the last 10 days, we have more than 800 new items that we cater to home deliveries.”

For instance, in addition to selling the produce and specialty items it always has, now Baldor sells toilet paper, hand sanitizers and other in-demand items.

“With that, our top sellers have been eggs, butter, pasta and tomato sauce — the basic essentials people need,” Marques said. “We used to sell bulk chicken breast and we’ve broken that down to five-pounders, we’re selling a lot of burgers, custom-cut steaks and we even have a whole extensive line of what we sell to our chefs, such as foie gras and truffle honey.”

While Marques noted that people are paying closer attention to their wallets at this time, because they are no longer going out to restaurants, many still have some money that they can allocate to treat themselves.

“It’s been overwhelming trying to make it,” she said. “Every day there’s something new.”

Baldor continues working with a majority of its grower partners, local dairy and other vendors.

“We’re trying to keep our vendors in the game and as long as we’re doing this, we’re able to help them out,” Marques said. “We’re working with Driscoll’s on the limited edition berries — blueberries and blackberries — and that should be landing next week.”

Baldor now sells melons by the piece, watermelon, cantaloupe and cut fruit in a 10-ounce package. Artichokes are sold in a two-pack and mushrooms sold in four-ounce packages.

“Everything is more consumer friendly,” Marques said. “Everyone is gravitating toward spring and they want to feel positive as we all work to get through.”

The company also recently started selling fish including salmon, halibut, swordfish and shrimp, which come in one-pound packages, and which have sold out every day since it started.

Also popular are charcuterie, almonds, organic milk, coffee and yogurt — mostly coming from local partners. Beverages are also in demand, with hot items being Saratoga local water to basic Poland Spring to fresh juices from Cross River, NY-based Living Juice.

Ben Walker, vice president of sales and marketing for Baldor, said in response to COVID-19, the company has created a new consumer delivery program.

“It has been a massive undertaking, but we saw about 85 percent of our business evaporate, which when you have 2,200 employees, 400-plus trucks and three distribution centers, we knew we needed to do something,” he said. “We saw the retail channel was struggling and people needed someone to bring them food, so we thought, ‘let’s give this thing a shot.’”

Baldor already had about 70 percent of its business on its website for its B2B business, so the infrastructure was already in place.

“Over 48 hours, we were able to create a new home delivery signup process and started taking home delivery customers really quickly,” Walker said. “We are doing a 50-mile radius around New York City and all of Long Island, servicing Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Rhode Island, and also just opened up Washington, DC.”

Although it’s too soon to know if Baldor will continue this service once things return to normal, the company will continue doing what it can to help people get the food they need and want.

“We took this opportunity to be aggressive and take risks and we’re getting the job done, which is testament to our company,” Walker said.