How did you get your start in the produce industry?
After four years in New York City working for worldwide commodity traders Philipp Bros. and Louis Dreyfus Co., I decided to start my own venture and chose the produce industry. The week I started the company in January 1986, I flew to Coral Gables, Fla., and met with Victor Moller, the founder of the newly established Hortifrut. Within three weeks, I was bringing in eContainers, each holding 32 cases of raspberries, to several East Coast supermarkets. That summer I also began to market Virginia-grown blackberries. My love of berries had begun.
My original idea was to ship product directly to supermarkets, but a few eContainers arriving upside down that first year convinced me that warehousing was necessary. I rented my first warehouse in Washington, D.C., in early 1987. Today, we have five large distribution centers in the U.S., four of those company-owned, in Jessup, Md.; Schiller Park, Ill.; Miami; Oxnard, Calif.; and Laredo, Texas.
What roles have you held during your career?
In college, I worked for an export management company to market blood-pressure kits in Caracas, Venezuela. One summer during Harvard Business School, I worked for General Foods, marketing their breakfast beverages. I did stints at multinational trader Philipp Bros. (now Phibro), especially on projects in Latin America. At Louis Dreyfus Co., I was VP of a China trading company for U.S. food-industry manufacturers.
Aside from berries at my company, which I started as J.L. Honigberg & Associates in 1986 and renamed Sun Belle in 2002, we also helped develop the U.S. market for greenhouse vegetables, becoming one of the largest importers of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers from the Netherlands and setting up a year-round greenhouse tomato business with imports from Israel and Mexico. We imported the first tomatoes on the vine as decoration to our booth at the 1993 Washington, D.C., PMA! It was a novelty in the Netherlands then and was not yet commercial, packed by a couple of growers in wooden crates. We developed the product in the U.S. marketplace into a mainstay in produce departments, and it grew into an important crop in the Netherlands as well.
Together with Julio Giddings and Patricio Cortes in 2002, Sun Belle started operations in Mexico and Chile in 2002. In Mexico I identified a Brazilian variety of blackberry, the Tupy, which was attractive, consistently sweet and had a long growing season. Prior to Sun Belle’s championing of the Tupy to American retailers, blackberries were inconsistent and poorly shipped, with little appeal to retailers. We then developed year-round availability of fresh blueberries and blackberries. In 2007 we brought the Italian Erika raspberry variety to Mexico and began serious varietal development efforts with breeders and universities.
How would you describe your current role?
I’m extremely engaged in Sun Belle’s day-to-day operations. I strategize, make decisions about capital expenditure, assist in business development and keep in touch with our principal growers and clients.
What do you hope to accomplish/contribute through that role?
My aim is to grow the business organically on a national and international scale, including introducing fantastic new berry varieties, while maintaining and improving our hard-earned reputation for quality, service, reliability and integrity. This isn’t a virtual business—for our customers and growers, a marketer is often only as good as the handling of the most recent shipment.
What industry groups are you involved with?
For many years, I’ve been on the board of the USDA-sponsored U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council and currently serve on their promotions committee. As a music lover, I’m very involved in classical music in the Chicago area, serving as a governing member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a life trustee of the Merit School of Music (which operates a music conservatory as well as programs in many Chicago public schools) and on the board of the Pilgrim Chamber Players on Chicago’s North Shore.
What professional accomplishment are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of innovations: the introduction of such game-changing products as tomatoes on the vine, baby eggplant, the Tupy blackberry in 2003, and the golden berry; new packaging, including clams and bags for tomatoes on the vine, the 12- and 18-ounce blackberry pack, and the Vari Berry mixed berry pack; and extensive work in varietal development on bushberries. I was proud to be chosen as a 2004 honoree of United Fresh Women in Produce. That ceremony was held at McCormick Place in Chicago, so my parents and my then-7-year-old twins could join me. Finally, the unstinting efforts of our several hundred employees at Sun Belle are the core of the business make me incredibly proud.
What does leadership mean to you?
Vision, drive, honesty and absolute accountability.
Who are some of your industry mentors?
Frieda Caplan was already a legend when I first joined the industry. She embodied creativity, spirit and toughness that allowed her to make a mark on what had been a male-dominated industry. She changed what America eats—for the better.
What’s a little-known or fun fact about you?
I bicycle on Chicago’s lakefront early nearly every morning. While cycling, I listen to the news on Sirius XM or begin my work day with calls to a board member living in France and anybody else who can tolerate the occasional sound of whistling wind.
What’s your favorite efficiency hack?
I type almost as fast as I think. I taught myself to type in fourth grade to write short stories, exceeded 100 words per minute on a manual typewriter by age 12, went on to work in company typing pools in high school, typed up friends’ papers in college … and now I send e-mails a mile a minute.
If you had to pick one fruit or vegetable to eat every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Fruits and vegetables are my babies. With improved genetics and growing practices, so many fruits have better flavor these days. When I’m not not eating blackberries, blueberries and raspberries, I enjoy cara cara oranges and some of the new grape varieties.
