FRESNO, CA -- Bill Lewis and Shani McKinney have joined Crown Jewels Produce. "As South American managing partner, [Mr. Lewis] has opened an office in Santiago and will help develop the company's new import program from Chile, Peru and Brazil," according to a company press release. Ms. McKinney "will be working from the Fresno main office with import operations as well as foreign and domestic sales."

Many people misunderstand the National Watermelon Association’s queen program. The queen program is not a beauty pageant, it is a job that requires more than beauty — the young women are intelligent, well-spoken and well-trained in representing the watermelon industry, as the annual Syngenta-sponsored queen-training weekend showed recently in Naples, FL.

The NWA has nine chapters representing watermelon-producing states. Each of those chapters has a queen who serves 12 months. From that group, one is selected to spend another year representing the industry as national queen.

California Vegetable Specialties, a major grower of Belgian-style endive, recently dedicated a new 20,000-square-foot chicory root cold-storage facility next to its grow out operation in Rio Vista, CA. Designed by Integrated Structures of Berkeley, CA, this state-of-the-art facility could save the company up to 75 percent in energy costs, and repay the cost of the entire facility in 17 years.

Utah Onions, a provider of premium red, yellow, white and sweet onions, hired RICHARD PAZDERSKI as director of business development, effective April 30. He will be responsible for directing all new business development activities for the company.

There has been a Deardorff on the board of directors of the Western Growers Association continuously for the past 60 years. Four generations of Deardorffs have served, starting with W.H. Deardorff in 1952, which began his five years of participation. He was followed by a son, W.W. Deardorff, who was first elected in 1958 and served for 11 years with his tenure ending in 1967. Tom Deardorff Sr. took over in 1968 and served for 33 years, including a stint as chairman of the board in 1979.

LIVINGSTON, NJ — In an effort to distinguish itself in the highly competitive environment of upscale supermarket retailing, Kings Food Market has taken on the challenge of providing its customers with fresh local produce 24 hours after it’s harvested.

“It’s a venture we decided to try this year,” Paul Kneeland, vice president of produce and floral for Kings, told The Produce News May 23 at the grand reopening of its Livingston location. “It’s something we feel will differentiate us.”