Brooks handles full range of tropical items
Brooks handles full range of tropical items
“Brooks Tropicals grows the ‘who’s-who’ of tropical produce items,” said Mary Ostlund, marketing director for the Homestead, FL-based tropical produce grower-shipper. “Tropicals are growing at such a strong rate, and we closely watch for the next sky-rocketing fruit. The fun is that everyone knows more tropicals will go mainstream in the future.”
Brooks Tropicals’ Caribbean Red papayas are available year round, as are the majority of its other tropical items.
“Our specialty and proprietary ‘SlimCado’ avocados run from June through January,” said Ostlund. “Starfruit is available seasonally.”
She explained that tropical fruits and vegetables need heat and humidity to grow well, so they’re limited to where they can grow domestically. South Florida Is basically the only place where they grow well in the continental U.S.
“And Brooks Tropicals takes advantage of the climate,” she noted. “We grow ‘SlimCado’ avocado, starfruit, aloe, boniato, guava and other tropical items in Florida. For Uniq Fruit, papayas, coconuts and many other items, we grow throughout Central America and the Caribbean.”
The company is currently promoting Caribbean Red papayas and Uniq Fruit, which Ostlund said “are going great guns.” She explained that spring is not high season for a lot of tropicals.
“We’re seeing gorgeous flowers on the trees, however, which means some great fruit will be coming this summer,” she said. “For now, bagged limes are selling well. Consumers like the convenience. Limes have gone from an occasional buy to something that can be added to just about any dish. Some are reaching for the green, just like they reached for the yellow. Whether they select limes over lemons, or both, they like the convenience of buying limes in our two-pound bags.”
In addition to the aforementioned tropical and ethnic items, Brooks Tropicals also produces aloe, boniato, calabaza squash, chayote, coconuts, including the company’s branded “Groovy” coconuts, ginger, guava, key limes, kumquats, malanga, mamey mango, habañero pepper, plantains, sugar cane, yams and yucca.
