Chef Rich Mead serves prosciutto and peach pizza to diners—clockwise from left, Tina Sarrade, Jennifer Machitani, Shola Akimtola and Chris Farrell—at his Orange County restaurant. Below is Mead’s French toast with fresh fruit.
everything else—going to restaurants or doing activities—getting a box of unbelievable fresh fruit on their doorstep was such a treat.” Yet, even now, sales continue to grow. Customers come from every U.S. state, ranging from celebrities and sports stars to everyday families willing to pay a premium for tree-ripened freshness and home delivery. The founder of a nutrition-product business, Cox is accustomed to selling packaged goods online, but he’s found that shipping perishable fresh fruit has unique challenges. “All the fruit is perfect to eat, but when you ship it, 24 hours of rubbing against the foam in the box can exacerbate any kind of imperfection on the skin or even the slightest bruising that you wouldn’t even notice. So, we have to pick the top 10% of the most perfect pieces of fruit to ship out. It’s pretty labor intensive from that standpoint,” Cox says. “It would be very easy for us to pick early and put unripe fruit in the box. But we refuse to do that.
The fruit develops so much flavor in those last couple of days (on the tree). We want people to be able to open up the box when it arrives and pull a peach out and bite right into it either that day or the next day.” Each week, crew members have a routine they follow. “We take orders all week, print out the labels on Sunday nights and then pick, pack and ship on Mondays,” Cox says. Californians get the box of 12 peaches the next day and the other states’ residents in two days. Buying fruit from Peaches.LA “is not cheap,” Cox says, “but once people try our peaches, there’s no going back. They want more.”
Linda DuBois ldubois@californiabountiful.com
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Summer 2024
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