Berry grower-shipper and marketer Wish Farms has been in business for 103 years and has been a staple in the Plant City, Fla., area since the late 1930s. In a year, Wish Farms ships about 120 million pounds of strawberries and about 35 million pounds of blueberries across the country.
The company’s 36-acre headquarters features a 125,000-square-foot warehouse and cooling facility, a 24,000-square-foot office, a blueberry farm, walking trails and more. Wish Farm’s facilities use 2,100 solar panels, which Wish Farms said meet about 60% of its electricity needs.
All berries that come into the company’s facility first undergo rapid cooling to ensure freshness. The modular automated cooling system uses 40% to 50% less energy than conventional cooling tunnels. The company picks berries every two to three days and packs up to 125,000 blueberries a day.
Wish Farms field-packs its strawberries and raspberries but machine-packs its blueberries. For packing, Wish Farms takes its cooled blueberries in bulk and washes, sorts and grades the berries before packing. Wish Farms uses an optical sorter, which selects berries based on external and internal quality, color, size and shape.
“It’s my family’s company. I’m fourth-generation. We’ve been in business for 103 years,” said Nick Wishnatzki, public relations director for Wish Farms. He said the company has berries coming in and out of Plant City year-round — strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and pineberries.
Wish Farms is in the thick of its Florida strawberry season, which runs from about Thanksgiving to Easter, Wishnatzki said.
“We’ve got some really great delicious berries coming out, and we have our pine berries variety of berry,” he said. “It’s a cross between a Japanese white and a Florida red strawberry. It’s a little less acidic than the red berries. You’re going to get more subtle tropical flavors. Sometimes people get tangerine, they get pear, pineapple hints of pineapple — it’s a really unique eating experience.”
Berries coming into holding rooms at the warehouse get pre-cooled and held until they’re shipped to grocery stores, Wishnatzki said.
“We typically don’t have anything staying here longer than 24 hours, so we’re getting them to the store as soon as possible, because they’re very perishable,” he said. “So, you get the freshest product at the store.”
Wish Farms’ quality control team checks pallets that are staged for shipping to make sure that it’s the best quality and that the grade is acceptable to the retailer accepting them, Wishnatzki said.
“Our company dates back to 1922. My great-grandfather Harris came over as an immigrant and he started selling fruits and vegetables for a push cart in lower Manhattan,” he said, adding that the company has evolved over the years from a brokerage to a farming operation, from Wishnatzki & Nathel Inc. to Wishnatzki Farms — and ultimately becoming what is is today.
