Relationships key for Coastline Family Farms
Growing in multiple locations requires good relationships and communication at the grower level, even when a company mostly grows and markets its own produce.
Salinas, Calif.-based Coastline Family Farms grows in Brawley in the winter and moves to the Salinas Valley in Spring. The company owns the majority of what it markets. It also has some third-party growers in the Salinas Valley.
“We’ve built long-term relationships with good growers. We look at everything from the field forward,” said Robert Verloop, chief operating officer and general manager at Coastline Family Farms. “Our approach is integrated to provide consistency all the way through our part of the supply chain.”
The company grows and ships romaine, iceberg lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli. In addition, it has a dry onion division and green onions year-round out of Mexicali.
“We have a robust program around romaine hearts that keeps expanding in volume,” Verloop said. “This is fairly new. We didn’t have a lot just five years ago. Demand is very good. It’s one of our best moving items. Our green onion is a quiet, strong item for us out of Mexicali. We send to a lot of dry onions to foodservice.”
One item the company is increasing in volume is mini romaine. It’s a smaller, more compact romaine. It eats crunchier and sweeter than traditional romaine. It has been popular in foodservice, but the company thinks retail will pick it up.
“We’re shipping more mini romaine after launching a few years ago. They are packed in sleeves or two-count bags,” Verloop said.
Part of the challenge to growing the item in volume has been that mills are backed up for packaging. A few years ago, it was a quick turnaround, but it is taking much longer now. Pallets are also harder to get, so costs keep going up.
Forecasting has become a real challenge, also.
“The market demand has been softer coming out of COVID, because the industry is trying to estimate what the public is going to do,” Verloop said. “This is a recovery phase we have to figure out. It will take a while to regain that equilibrium. We’re all seeing more price pressure. The key is figuring out how to align production to demand.”
Growers used to work with buyers on ad promotions for excess inventories. The practice helped regulate overproduction. That’s a real scenario for Salinas Valley shippers.
“What’s happened this season is a lot of these fields are coming in all at the same time,” Verloop said. “Mother Nature gave us a lot of yield coming off at the same time. Promotional programs don’t exist at the volume we need. We need more pull-through to move the volume. Customers will buy more if we give them the option.”
In the face of increasing costs, focusing on efficiency is the best way to combat the challenges faced over the last few years.
“We are constantly looking at making operations more efficient,” Verloop said. “We face increased costs of inputs across the board. We need to be ever more efficient.”
Efficiencies aren’t under complete control of grower-shippers. They have to rely on retailers to partner in order to face some of the industry challenges.
“The key to our efficiency is being aligned with key buyers,” Verloop said. “That’s being done through contracts. The open market is not as friendly as it used to be.”
