With the objective of making Vidalia-type sweet onions available when the true Vidalia onions were not in season, Saven Corp. in Savannah, GA, 25 years ago, began growing sweet onions in Chile during the winter and marketing them in the United States under the “Oso Sweet” trademark.

Eight years ago, with the addition of other production areas in Peru and the United States, “we became a year-round provider,” said President Brian Kastick. “We now have sweet onions available 52 weeks of the year. From South America, we have onions from Peru and Chile.” In addition, “we grow and sell onions from Mexico, we do a Vidalia program, we have a California program, and we also do a Nevada program. The idea is to offer customers on both the East and West Coast a sweet onion offering 52 weeks a year.”

Brian KastickDuring the summer, “we concentrate, in the East Coast, on our Vidalia onion, and, on the West Coast, we concentrate on our flat California onions,” he said.

“This is our fifth season with California onions,” Kastick told The Produce News March 31. He was as it happened, in one of the company’s onion fields in California’s Imperial Valley when The Produce News reached him on his mobile phone. The company’s California onion program “is fresh in my mind, because I literally just stepped out of the field” and into an air-conditioned car to take the call.

The end of March can be quite warm in the Imperial Valley.

Saven specializes in flat sweet yellow onions marketed under the “Oso Sweet” brand for the retail market, Kastick said. “We don’t do any foodservice right now with these flats. We are really focused on the retail market.”

“We have developed a whole theme around California Sweets for California,” he said. The company is “really putting a strong emphasis on our marketing and promotion” of its California-grown onions, with a focus on their being locally grown in California for Californians. “We are really excited about having a true flat onion for the California market.”

It is “a great onion,” he said. “There is no reason to take onions from the East Coast to the West Coast. This climate here in California is perfect for growing beautiful flat onions.”

The California production starts in Brawley about the first week of May. Around mid-June or early July, “we’ll make the transition to Bakersfield” in the southern San Joaquin Valley and “sell out of Bakersfield through July and August.” Then production will transition to Nevada.

Saven also markets the onions from California and Nevada to other western states.

The company has three sales offices, he said. The main office is in Savannah, GA. Saven also has sales offices in Detroit and in Bandy, OR.

Kastick emphasized that the onions Saven is growing, in California and elsewhere, are “truly sweet onions,” not just ordinary onions with a sticker on them that says they are sweet. They are “a great product,” and the growing condition in California are “absolutely perfect for making beautiful sweet onions.”

One of the principal benefits of growing and marketing flat sweet onions as opposed to round onions is consumer perception, and another is the differentiation retailers can offer to consumers on the produce shelf, according to Kastick. “Consumers associate flat with sweet, the flatter the sweeter.” That enables retailers to have a flat sweet yellow onion on their shelf that consumers can buy for fresh applications such as salads, sandwiches, salsas or grilling, as well as round onions that they can buy “for just a regular cooking onion.” It also makes it easy for consumers to make the differentiation.

“So we are giving the [California] retailer local produce, for the local market, in a way that they can differentiate it from other products from California and sell it at a premium and give the consumer a choice,” he said. A price point difference between the “Oso Sweet” flat sweet onions and regular round yellow onions also helps consumers differentiate, so when they buy the flat sweet onion, “they know they are getting something sweet.”