On Aug 10, Los Alamitos, Calif.-based Frieda’s Specialty Produce will celebrate the 95th birthday of its legendary founder Frieda Rapoport Caplan.
The company is encouraging industry friends to wish Frieda a happy birthday or to share a favorite Frieda moment on social media on her birthday using the hashtag #ThanksFrieda.
Caplan is still a force at her company, and joked in a news release that she won’t take the day off given for birthdays.
“I already have Thursdays off, that’s enough PTO for me,” she said.
The subject of the 2015 documentary film “Fear No Fruit,” Caplan became the first woman in the U.S. to own and operate a produce company on the all-male Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market.
Focusing on specialties, she helped introduce the kiwifruit to the American market in 1962 and later marketed more than 200 exotic fruits and vegetables, including Sunchokes, dragon fruit, habanero peppers, jicama, and Stokes Purple sweet potatoes.
In 1979, Caplan was the first woman to receive The Packer’s “Produce Man of the Year” award, which she handed back to the organizer, according to the release. The award was soon renamed “The Produce Marketer of the Year,” and she received a new plaque with that title.
She has been recognized as a key food industry leader by many media outlets.
In 1990, the Los Angeles Times’ “A Dozen Who Shaped the ‘80s” featured Caplan alongside Steve Jobs, Michael Eisner, Jane Fonda and others.
She has received numerous awards and honors for her achievements over the years, according to the release, including an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from CSU-Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for her achievements as one of the nation’s most successful female entrepreneurs.
Frieda now serves on the Board of Dramatic Results, a nonprofit agency that solves educational challenges by providing integrated arts programs to students and teachers in more than 40 public school campuses in California, Oregon and Alaska.
