Editor’s note: The following profile is from the 2025 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.
Tim Harrington — Senior merchandising manager, Stemilt Growers
If you’ve ever been to a Stemilt Growers trade show booth, you’ve likely met Tim Harrington, the company’s senior merchandising manager. Harrington has a dynamite personality and the sales know-how to back it up.
Harrington will retire from Stemilt in 2026. He says it’s bittersweet.
“It’s such mixed emotions,” he says. “I’m voluntarily quitting the best job I’ve ever had.”
Harrington got his start in the fresh produce industry with Hannaford Bros. in the produce department before going to college to study marketing, a job he says really helped him in his future roles. He worked part-time while going to school. And after graduation, Harrington worked at Shaw Supermarkets for 23 years, 13 of which as a quality assurance manager. He joined Stemilt in 2009, as a merchandising manager, where he says he could meld his marketing degree with his produce department expertise — and the rest is history.
Harrington credits his success to his wife, Donna, who he says has supported, encouraged and championed him through his 33 years in the fresh produce industry.
What are the biggest challenges facing growers and marketers of pears, apples and cherries?
Maintaining the economics of growing and packing. As with many in the produce industry, we’ve seen the expense of farming and packaging rise significantly over the past 10 years. In my eyes, the retail on apples, pears and cherries has remained basically static. They really haven’t seen any changes in retail over all these years. In some cases, retails have not changed in those 10 years; apples, pears and cherries are still a tremendous value for a family’s grocery cart.
Labor is another challenge facing our industry. I’m so proud to say that Stemilt is on the cutting edge of combating this with the latest and most sophisticated pear, cherry and apple packing lines. With this new technology and equipment, we can maximize production that will offset some of the labor challenges. All of these enhancements and have come at a significant investment, but they are absolutely essential to our business.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities for growth in the pear, apple and cherry categories?
We grow a significant amount of our apples organically. And truthfully, the industry hasn’t grown to its full potential with organic apples, pears and cherries — certainly not to the numbers we’re growing and packing organically. There’s a significant room to have increases with organic apples and pears and cherries far beyond what they’re currently achieving — to maximize organic apple, pear and cherry sales, to increase promotions and awareness. While we have seen organic apple, pears and cherries grow in sales over the past 10 years, there is still double-digit opportunities to capture more of that business.
The organic consumer is the ideal consumer shopping in your store or online. Their basket size, in many cases, is double that of the conventional shopper. Having a well-balanced, competitive organic offering at the store is key. With apples and pears, a premium of anywhere between 30 cents to 50 cents a pound is ideal on most varieties; that narrow spread of retail will maximize sales as well as enticing new customers to the organic category.
Are there specific programs that you’ve been especially proud to help build, market or champion?
One that really stands out is the opportunity to share what I call a look inside the world of apple, pears and cherries at Stemilt. We’ve done that through our unique Stemilt Apple, Pear and Cherry College.
We’ll take anyone from a produce manager to a produce specialist to a produce inspector to a category manager to a director to a VP to an owner. We run it very similarly to Driscoll University.
I’m really proud of the education that we’ve done with these people through these on-site apple, pear and cherry colleges, sharing the knowledge of the behind the scenes, of what it takes to grow beautiful and delicious fruit.
I’m also proud of the many visits to our retail customer locations to bring the orchard to them for on-site educational sessions. We actually go and we’ll do a two-hour educational session with videos, interactive questions. This, too, has allowed many store team members to gain valuable knowledge about where our products come from and the latest and fresh trends of what we see for the future.
Many of the interactive office samplings have allowed teammates to try new and exciting upcoming varieties. I have a niche for going into people’s corporate headquarters to their cafeterias, and in taking a new variety of an apple or cherry or pear and spending the mid-morning through mid-afternoon either giving out a whole piece of fruit or slicing fruit, having hundreds and hundreds of people try it.
Of course, we do that store level as well, but these educational and learning sessions, I think, are invaluable. And I’m very proud of that, proud of us at Stemilt for having apple and cherry colleges. It’s renowned. No one else does it. It’s really unique to us, and we’re super proud of all the people over the last 16 years we’ve had come through.
Who have been the most influential mentors or role models in your journey, and what lessons from them do you carry into your career today?
Al Michoud was my first produce manager that I worked for in the early ’80s. Al taught me the value of a true day’s work. He taught me about the seasonality of fresh produce as well as making sure only the best quality and freshness were present on the counters. He was a stickler for this too. If you didn’t take off the bad stuff in the morning, he was going to get you. He was a stickler for freshness on the counters, making even if the display wasn’t full. What was out there had to be primo, and I’ve carried that through my whole life.
And then I got to the latter part of my career, where I credit Roger Pepperl and Brianna Shales for being highly influential in my latter part of my life. They took a chance on me, they hired me and then they encouraged me to reach my full potential in interacting with our customers through my creative delivery. I don’t even know I got this creative delivery built inside me. All I know is they liked my personality. They liked the way I interacted with our retailers, and they gave me full carte blanche to go off and do whatever it took to really maximize the relationship and the sales potential with those customers.
They both encouraged me to reach my full potential of interacting with our customers through my creative delivery. They were super supportive of my suggestions for my unique ways of reaching customers, whether it be a road show or a town hall event or even a simple lobby sampling. They always boosted my confidence. Whatever I set my mind to, this was a huge boost, allowing to be more confident and achieve success in ways that I only dreamed of.
What advice would you give to young professionals entering the produce business today?
If the opportunity presents itself, work produce in the retail store environment for a year or two. Anybody entering the business, I personally think they should have a year of store produce experience as they grow and continue to become familiar with all of the offerings in the produce department as well as how they are merchandised. This will truly help establish a well-rounded picture of what it’s like to spend a day in the life of produce. You’re going to be exposed to all the different seasons for a couple of years.
As you progress up the ladder in various positions in the industry, you can always reflect back on those basic roots. It also builds great street credibility. I know a lot of kids coming to university, and they just don’t want to do the retail hours. And I get it, but I think it’s a great building block for them to really get their feet on steady ground to understand. A lot of times, people come from university and they may be assigned to buy potatoes or onions or watermelons or cherries. This way, they have the whole department for a couple of years, and they’ve seen how it works.
The category managers and vice presidents — their customers are the stores. The store’s customers are the people who come shop the store.
If you tell someone you worked in the stores, you truly do know what it’s like to be on the front lines with this produce.
I would also like to encourage those young professionals entering our industry to find a mentor who has a significant amount of years in the business. There is much to be gained from the knowledge of a seasoned veteran.
