Bayshore enters Calif. grape deal with new consumer brand
Bayshore enters Calif. grape deal with new consumer brand
Bayshore Produce LLC, an import-export company based in Miami, FL, which has been heavily involved in Chilean exports, has entered the California grape deal in order to offer clients an extended season on grapes. It is also introducing a new trademarked retail brand, “Grapes in the Sun,” which it will use on high-graphic gusseted handle bags as well as clamshells.
“After having quite a bit of success in the Chilean grape deal, we decided we wanted to carry it through the California deal, and we thought the easiest way to do that was to try to come up with our own label that we could pack in both areas,” said founder and managing partner Rosann Cabrera in an interview with The Produce News July 17.
Cabrera said that she opened Bayshore almost five years ago “after working almost 18 years with C.H. Robinson.” It started primarily as an export operation, “and in the last three years or so, we started importing a lot of products,” Cabrera said. “For exports, we do a full line of all produce, I always like to say apples to zucchini.” In the import programs, “we do mostly fruit.”
Chile is the major source for Bayshore’s imported products, “but we are also bringing product in from Costa Rica and Dominican Republic, and we are thinking about Peru for next year,” she said. “Grapes are probably our biggest mover, followed by imported apples.”
Bayshore will be having its grapes packed by two different co-packers in Delano, CA, this season.
“We will be doing all varieties” of green seedless, black seedless and red seedless grapes as well as the seeded Red Globes, Cabrera said. “The first orders are going out this week. We were hoping it was going to be last week, but the heat they have had in California kind of pushed things back.”
Initially, Bayshore will market the California grapes mainly in the Southeastern United States and in export markets, but Cabrera was hopeful that the program would expand into other parts of the United States.
“We picked a good year to do this,” she said. It appeared that California was “going to have a very large crop” of grapes this year, “even larger than last year, and quality seems excellent this year.”
The grapes have “nice color and high Brix,” she said. “So I think we picked a good time to do it.”
