“Produce Pete” was known in households across the tri-state area for his popular food segment that aired on NBC 4 New York for 33 years.

“Produce Pete” Napolitano Photo: Courtesy of NBC 4 New York/WNBC

Beloved local media fixture and lifelong New Jerseyan “Produce Pete” Napolitano has died following health complications that worsened in recent weeks. He was 80 years old.

Napolitano was known in households across the tri-state area for his popular “Produce Pete” food segment that aired on NBC 4 New York for 33 years. Every Saturday morning on Weekend Today in New York, Napolitano would opine to viewers about one of his favorite in-season fruits or vegetables and offer up a recipe, often from the kitchen of his wife, Bette.

“Fruits and vegetables may have been his topic, but his work was always rooted in life, family, and hard-earned experience,” NBC 4 New York/WNBC wrote in a memo to staff on Monday, January 26, announcing his passing. “Please keep Pete’s family in your thoughts. He’ll be deeply missed by all of us.”

For several years, Napolitano, along with his friend and longtime collaborator Susan Bloom, also penned an online column for New Jersey Monthly, where they covered everything from artichokes to cherries to satsuma oranges.

Napolitano was born in Bergenfield in 1945. He learned the ins and outs of the produce biz from his father, an Italian immigrant who moved to New Jersey after World War II, peddling fresh fruits and vegetables door to door and opening Napolitano’s Produce in Bergenfield in 1959. After high school, Pete worked for his family’s business for three decades until it shuttered in 2006.

In 2023, Pete recalled the story the story of how he ended up appearing on TV segments. He told New Jersey Monthly: “In the 1980s, a woman came to my store and saw me chatting with a customer and explaining something about the product. She stood around for a while, told me what she heard was very interesting, and wanted me to come on Channel 9 for a short segment. I told her no, because I was so busy, but two or three months later she called again. I said no again, but my wife said yes. She knew it would be a great opportunity. In 1992, I went to NBC. I do a three-to-five-minute segment every Saturday.”

He was also a proponent of local farming. He said his father taught him that “if the farmers are gone, so is your business. Even though Jersey has fewer farms now, we still need them to be able to grow everything.”

Pete and his wife, Bette, met as teenagers, raised two children together and welcomed seven grandchildren.

“Pete shared his family with our viewers, and in return, viewers welcomed him into their homes every Saturday morning,” the WNBC staff memo read. “So many told us that Produce Pete was a reason to get up early—even on a weekend.”