Almost three decades ago, Frank J. Schuster founded Val Verde Vegetable Co., Inc. to sell the crops grown on his family farms in Alamo, TX. The company has since become a major grower, packer and shipper in the Rio Grande Valley and importer of fruits and vegetables from Mexican partners. Now, Val Verde is setting the stage for the next generation of vision and leadership with a new management team comprised of industry veteran Jed Murray as well as Frank’s sons, Kurt and Max Schuster.

Frank Schuster will be on-hand as chairman of the board and “Old Man Advisor” to provide insight from his years of experience. But Murray, who is also president of the Texas Vegetable Association, is quick to note, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile. Val Verde still has the same high-quality standards, the same name you’ve come to know and trust, but it’s hopefully a little bit edgier, we’re going to push it a little bit more. There’s a lot of opportunity here in Texas and we want to be involved in it.”

Every business has a life cycle. Sometimes that begins and ends with the career of its founder. Sometimes that cycle is extended to a next generation and beyond.

“Val Verde is not waning, we’re at the plateau right now and it’s a perfect time for Frank to step back and allow our ideas and energy to come to the forefront,” Murray said. “Paired with Frank’s wisdom, it takes us to another level as a company.”

Vice President-Finance Kurt Schuster is a member of the 2005 class of Texas A&M and a dual degree graduate with a Masters and an MBA from the University of Oklahoma. He joined Val Verde in 2010 and has been responsible for the farm accounting as well as tax and regulatory issues. He was a recipient of the Frieda Rapoport Caplan Family Business Scholarship to the United Fresh Washington Public Policy Conference in 2012.

Vice President-Operations Max Schuster graduated from Trinity University with a degree in marketing. He has spent the last three years working from the ground up to run the cabbage operations. He will now also be in charge of production and harvesting for Val Verde’s extensive greens program as well as working with the company’s Texas growers.

Chief Executive Officer Jed Murray is an agriculture graduate of Cal-Poly and brings 20 years of industry experience in California, Arizona, Texas and Mexico to the table. He has been with Val Verde for five years, most recently serving as vice of president-operations.

The average age of a Texan farmer is 59. The largest demographic segment of the state’s farming population is the over-70 group.

“One of our problems in Texas and industry wide is not having a lot of young talent wanting to come back to the industry,” Murray said. “Frank’s sons are young and educated and want to build on his legacy and so do I. That’s an asset that puts us in a better position than a lot of companies — people with new ideas and energy who want to be in the industry. We will have a shortage as an industry nationwide of people wanting to farm, especially from an operations standpoint. One of the strengths of the new Val Verde is that there are young people who want to be involved and grow the industry and come back to a business that doesn’t have the bright lights of Broadway.”

There may not be glitz and glamour, but farming does present opportunity, especially for those with vision and new ideas. Val Verde can supply retailers, wholesalers and the food service industry with a wide array of product and is looking to expand its reach. Part of that new approach is a willingness to experiment with crops that have not been part of its traditional program, like arugula and three kinds of kale.

“We want to be successful for our buyers and growers. We look at our growers as customers as well, we’re in the middle — our job is to provide the best quality possible for our customer and provide the best return possible for our other customer, the grower. That makes for a very successful business and we’re not looking to change that, just expand on it,” Murray explained. “We’re interested in trialing ‘new-old’ items of Texas. For example, I’m not after iceberg lettuce, but Romaine could be a very good product here. We’re playing with trialing Romaine, cauliflower, and arugula this year. We’re working with Texas A&M Agrilife researchers and seed producers to find things that will work in our region and provide another solution for people looking for product produced here in the great state of Texas.”

He continued, “The nice thing about Texans is they support other Texans. There are a lot of mouths we can feed in this state. Taste buds are changing in this country, Texas taste buds are changing, and we need to make sure we’re on that. You can grow basically everything you want in Texas. When the weather’s good we can grow anything. We might lose a planting here or there but overall our season’s basically the Yuma [AZ] season and actually a little bit longer.”

Val Verde is also working to diversify its business mix, specifically adding more retailers to the picture.

“There’s a contract business and a market business; we’re very market-driven, we pull in our horns when it’s not good and when it is we capitalize. We try to return as much to the grower a possible and we look at the market to capitalize those growers,” Murray said. “There’s a steady flow to having a good relationship with retailers, your volume comes in and goes out, so our goal is to increase our representation at the retail level. Basically we’re trying to change our business mix so that we have the right ratio so we can maximize returns to our growers.”

“Frank’s goal is to look at crops with longevity that crosses a season, not a one month window, something you can harvest from November through May. We have product we grow here locally we can sell from November to May,” Murray said. “And then the other half of our business comes from Mexico. Mexico is our year-round supply solution, they complement us when we don’t have product here.”

Val Verde is also keeping an eye on new technology and honing its food-safety focus.

“The companies that are still here and thriving are the ones that have learned when to spend money and when not to. We’re investing to increase our efficiencies, our food-safety standards. We’re embracing FSMA and as importers we have to have our Mexican growers produce to the same standards that exist in the U.S. We go down and spend time to make sure they’re working to the standards that we expect.”

Murray is a fan of motivational legend Tony Robbins’ methodology, and he points to that model as a blueprint for Val Verde’s future.

“If you want to be successful, you look at someone who’s where you want to be, look at what they’re doing, ask what their mistakes were so you can avoid those and go make new ones,” Murray said.

“We get to ask Frank what mistakes he made and go make our new ones. Frank likes to quote Butch Cassidy from the movie: ‘Just keep thinking, that’s what you do best,’ he tells me. I’ll throw 100 ideas against the wall and see what sticks. You can’t be afraid to throw ideas out — throw it out there and somebody might build on it and make it into a really great idea.”