McDaniel Fruit promotes Carson McDaniel

Carson McDaniel, a third generation member of the family that established and is running McDaniel Fruit Company in Fallbrook, CA, has been elevated to the position of vice president and is now a member of the senior leadership team.

President Rankin McDaniel, whose father planted his first avocado trees in San Diego County in 1944, said he and his brother, Larry, who are co-owners of the company, were very pleased to announce the promotion of Carson, who is Larry’s son. “Carson has the aptitude, ability and dedication to understand the global avocado industry and help take our company to greater heights,” Rankin McDaniel said.

While Rankin is still the president and Larry serves as executive vice president, Carson will take over some of the direct responsibility of the different facets of the organization. “In this position, I will be overseeing sales, operations and sourcing and putting together our broad strategies to help the company grow and better serve our growers and customers.”

The younger McDaniel said that his uncle and father have been running the company for 50 years and are looking to relinquish some of their duties. He noted that he is one of three members of the third generation of the family to be working for the organization along with his cousin Rankin McDaniel IV and his sister Amanda Cameron.

Carson grew up in the family business, adding that there are pictures of him on the sorting line in the packing facility when he was only six years old. After high school, he attended University of California at Berkeley and received a degree in business in 2010. “In the back of my mind, I always thought I would eventually end up in the family business, but I started my career with Bloomberg Finance in the Bay Area,” he said. “I think that was good for both me and the company.”

After four years there in financial sales, Carson did come back to the San Diego and began working for McDaniel Fruit in 2014. Initially, he was employed in the company’s field division working with its California growers, and then matriculated to the sales desk, handling some of the McDaniel’s top customers. In recent years he has also been involved in business development to grow sales and in global strategies to increase the company’s ability to source on the international level.

“I think I have a good holistic understanding of the avocado industry as well as the business knowledge to help grow our company,” he said. “We are always trying to responsibly grow our sales. We are bullish on the California avocado industry as that has always been the core of our business. We expect this year to be a good year for McDaniel Fruit but it is going to be a much different year than last year as it will be the first year in which we will see more than 3 billion pounds of avocados sold in the U.S.”

He said this California season the company will work with its longtime customers who are loyal to the California crop to make sure they get adequate supplies. “We are going to highlight our Linda-Vista brand, which has been our hallmark label for a long time for both our conventional and organic fruit,” he said.

Looking down the road, Carson expects Colombia to become the next big import partner for McDaniel Fruit. “We are forming new partnerships with some of the larger growers in Colombia and when the timing is right we do expect to significantly increase our imports from that country. We are also moving into Jalisco (Mexico) in a bigger way now that the district can ship into the U.S.”