Urner Barry

In 1857, Benjamin Urner was working as a printer in New York City. As a printer, he would encounter many merchants coming to port and requesting price circulars for use at the markets. He began to notice discrepancies in the prices and decided to publish a universal report called the Producers' Price Current, which was later renamed the Urner Barry Price-Current.

The report eventually became a daily circular and the data were collected by visiting with buyers and sellers in New York marketplaces. Urner and his son founded the Urner Publishing Company in 1882, which offered one year subscriptions for $1.00.[2]

In 1873, L. Frank Barry started the New York Daily Market Report, which covered all produce markets. It was the first such daily publication in the country. Since the two were engaged in a similar type of business, they recognized an area of mutual interest and together formed the Urner-Barry Company, which was originally located on 173-175 Chamber Street in New York City.

Urner and Barry were lauded for their expertise in the industry, and even consulted during the publication of L.D.H. Weld's The Marketing of Farm Products[3] In the 1960s, the company moved to Jersey City, New Jersey and later to the Toms River area.

COMTELL (short for "Commodity Intelligence") began as a computer platform that transmitted price quotes daily via satellite. It was the company's answer to the growth and progression of their report publishing business, which prior to this had been done by mail.

In the mid-1990s, COMTELL went live as a website. It is used today by industry professionals to access spot and historical quotations for a variety of cuts, as well as market projections, futures quotes, market commentary, news, and analytical tools such as User-Defined Relationships.

Urner Barry's Price-Current primarily focused on the poultry and egg market, with the Seafood Price-Current being introduced in 1973. In the early 1990s, Urner Barry acquired Yellow Sheet, a Red Meat quotation service similar to the Price-Current, from National Provisioner. This gave Urner Barry the ability to provide protein-focused market information to a variety of businesses.