“There are a lot of exciting things happening right now” at Progressive Produce Corp. in Los Angeles, Vice President Jack Gyben told The Produce News. Among them is “the fact that we bought the asparagus business from Mission Produce and dramatically expanded our asparagus business.”

The company has also more than doubled its organic business over the past year and has, for the fourth year in a row, doubled its sales of “Hollywood Fries” potatoes, according to Gyben.

Progressive Produce and Mission Produce Inc. in Oxnard, CA, jointly announced in a press release in October 2013 that Progressive had acquired Mission’s asparagus business. The deal, which involves supplies from Mexico and includes the servicing of Mission’s customers, significantly increased Progressive’s presence in fresh asparagus.

Progressive Produce’s growing organic program includes several varieties of organic potatoes.Due to that acquisition, Progressive is now year-round in the asparagus business and is a major player in the deal, selling asparagus throughout the United States and Canada, Gyben said. ”We grow in Mexico, Peru, California and Washington.”

In the area of organics, “our organic business has increased dramatically over the past year by design,” Gyben said. “We have put much more focus on increasing acreage and increasing items in a number of categories” such as potatoes, onions, sweet onions and asparagus.

“We are year-round in some [organic] commodities, and not yet in others,” he said.

Progressive Produce is “a primary supplier of organic potatoes and onions to at least two national chains, and we have tried to lead through packaging and design elements to help the retailer differentiate the organic produce from the conventional,” Gyben said. That has been done by “making the packing more visible and attractive to the consumer.” The company has also helped make it easier for the retailers to sell organic produce “by improved UPCs and PLUs” and such on the packaging, he added.

“Those efforts have led to more than doubling of our organic business this last year,” he said.

“Hollywood Fries” potatoes are not a new product to Progressive, but they are a product that has been growing in popularity. “Hollywood Fries” are “a proprietary, high-solids Kennebec-type potato,” grown “using special seed,” Gyben said. “Demand continues to outpace supply.” The company increased acreage substantially this year expecting that it would be necessary to intensify selling efforts in order to move the crop, but “word of mouth has been so strong on ‘Hollywood Fries’ that the product is sold almost before we want it to be.”

There are national restaurant chains, “especially hamburger and fresh-cut French fry chains” that will only use “Hollywood Fries” potatoes for their fries, he said. The customers “have visited our growing operations to understand why we are able to deliver a potato that performs so well” and is so perfectly suited for French fries and potato chips.

“We have developed a ‘Hollywood Fries’ blog and are looking at expanding our marketing efforts into the next season,” Gyben said. “We again intend to double our business over the next 12 months.”