This Year it’s Personal

One of the things that I love about the culture we have here at FruitGuys is that our business is personal. Some might think that’s a dangerous strategy – how much do you really want to know about your co-workers? Your customers? Your farmers? But I believe that a professional community can benefit from getting to know one another. We try to get to know our new customers so we can understand how to help them best achieve their goals for office wellness, productivity, and team-building. We want to know the challenges that our farmers face and help them; however, we can. And we like to highlight the successes of our FruitGuys team members, like Chief Banana Beth Lisick.

Beth, who many of you may have seen at our health fairs, trade shows, or featured in our “FruitGuys Bananas” video adventures, is also a writer and poet who just published her second book, Helping Me Help Myself: One skeptic, ten self-help gurus, and a year on the brink of the comfort zone (William Morrow), an investigation of the self-help industry. People magazine gave it a four-star review, and Kirkus Review calls it “a delightful, Plimptonesque exercise in immersive journalism.” You can check it out at www.bethlisick.com.

On the farmer front, I’d like to introduce a new farmer to you. John and Gretchen Ceteras own the 20-acre Blue Heron Farm in Watsonville, CA that is supplying us with the beautiful and tasty organic Navel oranges in all the organic crates this week. John and Gretchen make sure all the oranges are hand-brushed at harvest, so they look great.
Remember to check out this week’s fruit mix to learn more about what is in your crate.

Enjoy and be fruitful! – Chris Mittelstaedt chiefbanana@fruitguys.com

P.S. – We always strive to bring you local and small-farm grown fruit. Sometimes during the year, this is more difficult. Some fruit will come from the Southern Hemisphere. This is done to maintain a wide variety for this mix. We still maintain a high standard for quality, but if you have any questions or concerns about this or would like regional only (apples, pears, and citrus at this time of year), please contact us. We try to be as flexible and responsive to your needs as nature permits.
Happy 2008!