Supplies of California endives are slightly less than last year at this time.
“But in the environment we’re in, we have plenty,” says David Moen of California Endive Farms in Vista, California. “The foodservice segment is really struggling still though retail demand is strong and hasn’t gone down.” He adds that as the company went into the holiday season, it factored in where it thought COVID-19 would be in terms of its affect on consumers and eating. “But we also had the Thanksgiving time period. We took a bit of risk to have some product on hand, though it’s not as much as last year,” he says.
California Endive's Sean Quintero and Rubi Maldonado.
Endive has a unique growth cycle requiring continual planning every {three to] four weeks for growing the vegetable since endive is actually grown twice. Endive’s second growth is what consumers eat. The first is in the field where roots are developed and then harvested and put into cold storage to be pulled out for future use. The roots take two to three days of defrosting, then three to four days of planting and then another three weeks of growing them to develop the edible shoots.
California harvesting
Moen notes that California Endive Farms has just harvested its roots in Northern California and is also getting ready to harvest roots in the Turlock, CA region.
Meanwhile on demand, Moen believes demand will be steady to higher on a COVID-19 adjusted daily basis through New Year’s. “January is a great month for vegetables when people like to eat well and eat greens and fruits,” he says. “We’ll have to relook after the holidays though because people are going to eat but not necessarily in a restaurant. And they aren’t necessarily going to be eating unique items like endive.”
David Moen of California Endive Farms.
He does note that organic sales have been particularly strong this year. “It was strong before all of this, but this pandemic has exposed a market out there where people really want to know where their product is from and that they feel is better for them,” says Moen. “We’ll continue to work with that and hopefully next fall we’ll have a bigger crop of organics to go into the marketplace.”
As for pricing, Moen says it’s similar to last year and is stable.
For more information:
David Moen
California Endive Farms
Tel: +1 (707) 374-2111
[email protected]
http://www.endive.com/