“Right now, we have started harvesting in South Georgia and are looking forward to a successful Georgia growing season,” said Seth Grant, who works sales for the Mills River, NC company. “In North Carolina, we have veg plantings in the ground down off of the mountain, and here in our mountain valleys, we are prepping the ground and getting plastic pulled, laying the framework to start dropping plants in the ground and getting us off and running towards a successful summer.
The company’s staples are tomatoes and Southern vegetables and receive and ship upwards of 20 tractor trailer loads a day.
“Working in North Carolina is vital to Flavor 1st, as it is our home state and where our headquarters are based out of,” Grant said. “We are strategically located on the East Coast, giving us the ability to ship overnight to most everywhere east of the Mississippi River. If we can’t get there overnight, we can get there in two days. This allows us to get very fresh product on the store shelves, giving us a high level of consumer satisfaction.”
Additionally, North Carolina is home to the majority of the company’s day-to-day team.
“We have a lot of history in North Carolina,” Grant said. “Flavor 1st is a family-based company, and we have farmed in these fertile mountain valleys of western North Carolina for eight generations, dating back to the late 1700s. Many of our team members grew up in and around produce and agriculture in this area, so it’s in our blood.”
As of May 21, the southern Georgia crops were looking strong and the Central Florida tomatoes were quickly finishing up, with transitions to northern Florida and southern Georgia and South Carolina coming up soon.
“We have updated some of our equipment lines here in the main packinghouse in North Carolina in order to help increase our efficiencies and put out a better end product for our customers,” Grant said. “This will also increase our ability to produce more packages during the day, leading to more opportunities for growth. We have also purchased some new machinery to allow us to eliminate some materials that are traditionally part of a finished pack.”
Of course, the company faces many uncertainties with the tariffs and suspension agreement and is keeping close tabs on what’s happening to see how it impacts business in the year ahead.
Flavor 1st knows the secret to success comes down to maintaining strong relationships with its customers.
“The key to our strong retail partnerships is communication,” Grant said. “With all of the uncertainties that we deal with in produce, unexpected issues do happen. The key to maintaining strong partnerships is constant communication from plantings all the way through delivery.”
Customer feedback is important to those on the team, knowing that at the end of the day, if the consumer doesn’t like the product, then they aren’t going to buy it.
“We are always listening to what customers have to say, trialing new varieties and working to improve our supply chain to maximize our efficiencies for the consumer to enjoy everything we grow on our farms,” Grant said. “We want to continue to grow with our partners, while also making sure that we stay true to what has made us successful up to this point; a high level of customer service.”
