Editor’s note: The following profile is from the 2024 Packer 25, our annual tribute to 25 leaders, innovators and agents of change across the fresh produce supply chain. (You can view all honorees here.) This feature has been edited for length and clarity.
Mitch Wetzel — Vice president of sales and marketing, Sunview Marketing International
What are some of the steps in your career that have led you to your current leadership role?
I’d say that a turning point in my career was in the late 1990s and early 2000s when there were a few groups starting a series of dot-coms in the business, and I went to work for one of those. Working in the nascent stages of the startup, buyproduce.com, helped expand and sharpen my business perspective to encompass all functional aspects of a company. I went from just being a salesperson to shifting my talents and skills into a much larger scope.
From there, I advanced my career with Anthony Vineyards, Capespan North America and Capespan South Africa, where we started a company that focused on year-round global supply of citrus and grapes.
In early 2018, I joined the Sunview team to lead their sales and marketing efforts and assist with some generational management transitions.
Do you enjoy what you’re doing right now, and what are some of the challenges with your current role is?
I absolutely love it! We are in a dynamic and exciting environment. I think that the permanent crop fresh produce industry is going through a lot of changes right now, especially in California. The dynamics and challenges seem to be growing exponentially every year, whether it’s labor, water, costs or regulation. While each and every one is important and difficult on its own, our family-owned and -operated company really embraces these challenges as opportunities. We embody and really push forward the term single source for California table grapes.
What that single source means is it’s one family, one grower and a one-stop shop. From the beginning to the end of the San Joaquin grape season, we grow and harvest amazing fresh fruit that covers every segment of the fresh table grape. Having one grower brings an enormous amount of consistency, and then the one-family piece really is the commitment and dedication to many generations. I think the customer base, when they meet the owners, understands that there is a real interest and long-term commitment to growing the business together.
What advice would you give to young people looking for a career in the industry?
I think there’s a lot of opportunity, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be agriculture or food science based; [the opportunity] could be in analytics; it could be in marketing, merchandising or robotics; it could be in systems management, or in process management. Those same challenges that I noted earlier are really where the opportunities lie for this next generation of leadership that’s getting out of college and starting their careers, because the game has changed.
The bottom line is that our business is getting more sophisticated. Growing and succeeding as a company necessitates that we continue to build a team that has a more sophisticated skill set. I think that that’s providing a lot of opportunities for produce companies.
We have an extensive internship program throughout all departments in the company. I also work regularly with Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. When I speak to those students, I really talk a lot about curiosity, and that curiosity, to me, is the biggest skill, or the biggest attribute, that I look for and encourage.
[I tell them] to really ask a lot of questions, really try to understand the situation, dive into it and leverage and use the many decades of experience that are usually in an office of a mature company. You may even have hundreds of years of experience available to you.
What is one industry challenge or issue in the next five to 10 years that you’re thinking about?
Labor and labor costs. The available skills that we all need, and the cost of those skills are a challenge. It’s not only a challenge on the grower-packer side of it, but it’s also a challenge on the retailer and customer side. When we talk to our retail partners across the country and, even frankly, across the globe, we’re talking about a lot of the same issues, and it’s all about finding great skilled teammates, and then understanding the associated costs.
How would you describe your leadership style, and what makes you effective as a leader?
No. 1, I try to encourage curiosity. No. 2 is I try as much as I can to be a coach and help people grow professionally. I talk to them and play on the curiosity and try to help them come up with suggestions and solutions and recommendations on their own, and then we can make decisions based on that.
If a manager does all the thinking and makes all the decisions in a vacuum, then you’re doing the whole team a disservice.
