Among the various forms in which The Garlic Co. in Bakersfield, CA, offers garlic to the retail trade is a recipe-ready vacuum pack of peeled garlic consisting of individual one-ounce vacuum-sealed packages in a six-ounce pouch. That product is currently going to “a few of our retail customers, but more of the peeled garlic is going in that direction,” said Michael Layous, who is in sales and marketing with the company.

The product is available in both conventional and organic forms.

Other retail products from The Garlic Co., according to the company’s website, include whole bulbs in 30-pound cartons, in two-pound bags, 15 per case and in three-pound bags 10 per case, minced garlic in 4.5-ounce, eight-ounce and 32-ounce jars, chopped garlic in 4.25-ounce jars, and an assortment of specialty products such as garlic braids, elephant garlic, shallots, cipollinis, fresh ginger and pearl onions.

Michael LayousIn addition to retail, The Garlic Co. services foodservice and industrial accounts. The majority of the company’s peeled garlic goes “either to foodservice or to industrial accounts, and those customers obviously add further value to it,” Layous said.

Most of the garlic going to foodservice customers is peeled. However, “Foodservice also takes some whole,” he said.

The common pack type for peeled garlic for foodservice customers, “for either us or our other California competitors” is a five-pound unit, Layous said. “We offer it either in a five-pound jar or a five-pound bag,” whereas some suppliers offer only one or the other.

“Most of what we do here is Late garlic,” Layous said July 24. The company started harvesting California Early garlic about mid-June. “We are done harvesting our Early garlic now. We haven’t hauled it all in yet, but it should all be here within the next week at our facility.” Harvesting of The California Late variety started mid-July, a little earlier than expected.

The company was currently packing Early garlic for the whole bulb fresh market and “also cracking and peeling some of the Early garlic,” he said.

“We are going to keep using that Early garlic for peeling … for some of our industrial customers for the next few weeks. But as of the end of this week, we are transitioning 100 percent to our Late garlic for our foodservice customers.”

In addition to peeled garlic, “at The Garlic Co. we do a fair amount of peeled shallots,” Layous said. “That is probably the second most popular item for those foodservice customers.”

The company also markets whole fresh shallots, packed for retail and foodservice in five-pound bags, eight to the case.

The Garlic Co. was currently harvesting both in the San Joaquin Valley and in the Salinas Valley. “Most of our garlic in the Salinas Valley is used for the fresh market, so we are not going to crack or peel that,” he said. “We are just going to sell it in whole bulb form. We finished undercutting” all of the acreage in Salinas and have started clipping. “We will probably be bringing in our first loads of Salinas garlic“ to the Bakersfield facility around the first week of August but will not start packing it for a few weeks, “because we are still going to be packing our Early garlic that was hand-clipped for the fresh market.”

The company’s overall garlic acreage for the 2014 harvest is up just a few acres over previous years, Layous said. In organic garlic, “we’ve got five more acres” this year, but “we don’t think we are going to have a problem selling that. The interest in that continues to grow.”