Jerry Wagner, director of sales and marketing at Farmer's Best International LLC in Nogales, AZ, retired Friday, Aug. 9, on his 56th birthday, after 27 seasons with the company and a produce career that goes back to his school days.

"I started working for my dad, who was a broker, after school while I was in high school," Wagner told The Produce News. He continued working for his father's company, Wagner Distributing, while in college.

The fall varieties are where the California table grape industry has seen the most growth recently, including this year, and the same is true for Stevco as a company.

Based in Los Angeles with offices in Bakersfield and Coachella, Stevco is a vertical operation, producing all of its own fruit through its subsidiary farming company, Lucich Farms.

Anthony Vineyards Inc. in Bakersfield, CA, will have volume increases for the fall grape deal in both its conventional and organic production, according to John Harley, vice president of sales and marketing.

The increases are mainly in red seedless varieties, he said.

With the season running a little early this year, Anthony Vineyards expected to be into several fall varieties by the first of September. “We will be into Scarlet Royals, Autumn Royals, Sweet Scarlets and Luiscos, more than likely,” by that date, Harley said.

As “one of the largest growers in the [San Joaquin] Valley of Autumn Kings, that variety of green seedless table grape “is going to be a staple for us on the back end of the season,” said Sean Stockton, president of Sundale Sales Inc. in Tulare, CA.

“We are known for our late season program,” said Louis Scattaglia, managing partner at Scattaglia Growers & Shippers LLC in Traver, CA. “We can harvest fresh grapes into December. As long as the weather cooperates, we are going to have a strong late-season grape deal.”

SGS grows, packs and ships a full lineup of table grape varieties in the central San Joaquin Valley, from early-season Flames to late-season Autumn Kings, but proprietary varieties exclusive to SGS are an increasingly important part of the company’s grape program.

Retailers often begin changing the sets of their produce departments around the first of September, switching over to fall fruit. In the process, stone fruit, which is generally regarded as a summer fruit, sometimes loses its place on the shelf.

The retailers do that because “they are so used to doing that. That is what history tells them to do,” said Doug LaCroix, a salesman at Family Tree Farms Marketing LLC in Reedley, CA.