“We are back in Arvin this year after a couple of years of not being in Arvin,” said Shawn Ricks, president of The Grape Guys in Cutler, CA.

Located at the southern end of California’s San Joaquin Valley, the Arvin district is always among the early grape-growing districts in the valley to get started.

Stevco Inc., headquartered in Los Angeles, grows table grapes in the San Joaquin Valley and the Coachella Valley of California and also imports grapes from the Mexican state of Sonora.

With branch offices in Nogales, AZ, Coachella, CA, and Bakersfield, CA, the company has North America-grown table grapes as long as anyone in the business.

“At Stevco, we continue to grow our total acreage, both in Coachella and the San Joaquin Valley, with the newer varieties and the newer plantings,” said Jared Lane, vice president of sales and marketing.

Located in West Sacramento, CA, Jim Hyatt Produce Co. Inc. specializes in “just onions and potatoes,” according to Jon Hyatt, a salesperson with the firm, whose father, James Hyatt, acquired the business in the 1970s from a man for whom he had been working, renamed it, and “switched it over” to exclusively an onion and potato house.

“We broker from shipping point” to customers throughout the country, “and we deliver locally within a hundred-mile radius of Sacramento [CA]“ from a distribution warehouse in West Sacramento, Jon Hyatt said in a June 7 interview with The Produce News.

Except for a late start due to cool, wet weather and somewhat smaller-than-normal sizing for the early part of the onion harvest, Telesis Onion Co. Inc. in Five Points, CA, foresees a normal season for the company, which specializes in onions grown on the west side of California’s San Joaquin Valley, according to Mike Smythe, who handles sales for the company.

Double D Farms in Coalinga, CA, has doubled its organic onion acreage in California’s Central Valley this year and now will be doing 100 percent of its marketing in-house.

With farming operations in both Mexico and California, Double D Farms is a vertically integrated, diversified grower-packer-shipper that grows and markets an assortment of both conventional and organic produce items, but it focuses mainly on fresh organic produce for retail and wholesale customers.

Indianapolis Fruit Co. Inc. is using the latest technology to help retailers promote its “Garden Cut” brand of processed products.

This summer, the Indianapolis-based firm will be launching a smart phone and iPad application using QR codes to help consumers scan “Garden Cut” packages for additional product information.

Indianapolis Fruit and “Garden Cut” both have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that are used to promote “Garden Cut” according to Shane Towne, who heads marketing and business development for Indianapolis Fruit.