About 14 years ago, Oxnard, CA-based Eclipse Berry Farms LLC, secured a deal with a Florida tomato grower and became one of the first shippers in the country to sell grape tomatoes.

“We were the first company to market grape tomatoes in North America and had an exclusive for three years,” said Stuart Gilfenbain, who handles sales (along with Rick Hearst) for the family-owned company started by his father, Norman Gilfenbain. “It was a special seed brought in from Taiwan.”

But after those initial three years, the Florida grower decided to put the sales in the hands of a relative as Mr. Gilfenbain recalls. “I told my dad it’s time to plant our own grape tomatoes.”

That year, Eclipse Berry Farms, which started as a strawberry grower-shipper, put in 100 acres of the smaller-profile grape tomatoes in Ventura County. The firm has steadily increased that acreage, adding 15 more this year to bring their grand total to 365 acres.

The firm is one of the larger grape tomato shippers in California. Mr. Gilfenbain said most of his competition comes from hot houses in Mexico, which are starting to prove problematic. Grape tomatoes have their own market and have been a very good item for the past decade. But the Eclipse Berry Farm sales executive said supply is starting to outpace demand. Eclipse grows its grape tomatoes outdoors, which puts a natural cap on production. Hot house production is totally different and allows for multiple crops and big spikes in volume. “Your yields can be 10 to 15 times greater in a hot house,” Mr. Gilfenbain said. “The volumes are getting too high.”

He said retailers do not typically promote grape tomatoes like they do other tomato SKUs such as Romas or tomatoes-on-the-vine. So an oversupply situation, which has been the norm lately, is difficult to clean up.

“Grape tomatoes have been a cash cow [for the retailers],” he said. “We have not seen a lot of aggressive marketing [at retail].”

Mr. Gilfenbain shook his head at how low the f.o.b. price has gone this year. “I just can’t figure out how the Mexican growers are making money at $3.85 or $4.85 or even $6.”

But he does see some light at the end of the tunnel. With hot weather blanketing much of the Midwest, Southeast and East Coast, Mr. Gilfenbain said the homegrown deals should come to a quick end and commercial producers from the West Coast might see a good market again for all tomato varieties. While the grape market does tend to move independently of that for the larger profile tomatoes, Mr. Gilfenbain said the market on those tomatoes does have an effect, especially in the summer when the local and backyard deals are in full swing.

Eclipse markets its grape tomatoes under its familiar “Cal Fruit” label. They are available in a variety of packs ranging from 10 to 20 pounds and include both bulk presentations and retail packs. He said the most popular configuration is a carton that holds 12 one-pound clamshells. “But we also do a lot of volume fill RPCs for some retailers that are exclusively RPC,” he added.