Cermak Produce Inc. is a family business that has grown over the last 30 years from owning and operating one Chicago area retail grocery store to a dozen. Mike Bousis, the company’s owner, said that the produce-oriented retailer does all of its produce buying through Chicago distributors.

Cermak, which is headquartered in Chicago, buys around 50-60 trailerloads of produce a week from the Chicago International Produce Market, or other local distributors, Mr. Bousis told The Produce News in a mid-May telephone interview.

Ready Pac Foods Inc., based in Irwindale, CA, has announced the hiring of Chef Thomas Helsel as its executive research chef. He reports to Sara Samala, research and development manager at Ready Pac Foods.

Formed in 2007, the Associación Mexicana de Horticultura Protegida A.C., headquartered in Culiacan, Sinaloa, and better known by its acronym AMHPAC, is scheduled to hold its fourth annual convention Aug. 24-26 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.

Village Farms International Inc., headquartered in Eatontown, NJ, has announced that it is building a new greenhouse in Monahans, TX. It is the fifth greenhouse built by the company in the state, and is based on the firm’s innovative proprietary technology termed “GATES.” The facility is expected to begin production in early 2012.

In the San Joaquin Valley this summer, “the early part of the grape deal is not going to be early,” Rick Paul, category manager at Sun World international LLC in Bakersfield, CA, said June 2.

He expects that there will be “somewhat” of a gap between the end of the grape harvest in the Coachella Valley in California’s southern desert and the start of the harvest for Sun World’s earliest varieties in the San Joaquin Valley. “We think we will be finished [harvesting in Coachella] and still have about two weeks to go before we get any fruit out of the San Joaquin Valley,” he said.

In a normal year, Homegrown Organic Farms in Porterville, CA, will begin its organic table grape program around mid-July with production out of the Delano and Richgrove areas in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

But the 2010 growing season, like the one the year before, has not been normal. The weather has been unusually cool and wet, and grapes, like just about every other commodity in the valley, are running behind schedule this year — again — as they did last year.