The Richard and the Ugly Tomato Story

1993

A True Story

Written 11/2008* 1,005 Words*

#152 By Howard Yasgar

My friend Richard was quite an entrepreneur.

I had met Richard around 1990, and by that time, he had already been in at least a half a dozen different businesses that I knew of.

Miami was absolutely the right place for Richard to be. Because Richard loved the ocean and most of the businesses he got involved with had something to do with the ocean and boating.

Richard had been involved in making boats, buying and selling boats and for a while he even repossessed boats.

That didn’t mean Richard didn’t have his eyes open to any other kind of opportunity.

If there was any possibility of making some money, Richard was always interested.

In 1993 I was in the business of rebuilding marine parts, and one day Richard stopped by to introduce himself.

It turned out we had a lot of mutual friends, and Richard said he wanted to get involved with us.

He was such a nice guy, we worked out a deal and Richard came to work with us and that’s when he told me the following story.

Back in the 1990’s South Florida was a tremendous producer of many types of fruits and vegetables.

As soon as you left South Miami and drove further South into the towns of Homestead, or Naranja, it was all just farms.

Because South Florida produced such a large variety of fruits and vegetables, there was the need for packing houses, and they appeared along the U.S. 1 roadside everywhere.

The job of the packing houses was to receive the various fruits and vegetables, direct from the farms, they wash them, sort for size and quality and package everything for the wholesale market.

The U.S. market for fruits and vegetables is an extremely picky one to sell to. I was told that the American public will not settle for less than perfect fruits and vegetables, and it’s the job of the packing houses to provide that kind of product.

It was the job of packing houses to sort and discard any imperfect fruit or vegetables.

Richard said that at the time of this story, he was doing business with a marine company located in Homestead, Florida, and he went to call them once a week.

So, as Richard drove South on Route 1, and into the city of Homestead, he had to pass by several packing houses.

Most of them had signs out front telling what items they specialized in, but not all of them did.

One day, as Richard was driving by three very big packing houses he noticed a terrible smell.

By the third week, Richard had become very curious as to why there was such a bad smell when he passed a particular packing house.

By the fourth week Richard was looking for a way to drive around to the back of the packing house and see what the hell was going on and where the smell was coming from.

Once he drove behind the packing house, he quickly saw where the smell was coming from.

There was a giant pile of tomatoes, and there was a bulldozer tractor running over the pile to squash them.

Richard said it was a very big pile about 30 or 40 feet long and several feet high, and there was a conveyor belt with more tomatoes coming out on to the pile all the time.

Richard knew right away that what they were doing must be illegal. They should have been hauling the garbage tomatoes to the land fill and having to pay to get rid of them.

The employees of the packing house also knew what they were doing was illegal, so they had their eyes out looking for inspectors.

When Richard pulled up and parked next to the tomato pile he looked like an inspector, so a manager from the packing house came out ready to do battle.

Richard picked up a tomato and looked at it, it was perfect except it was like two tomatoes had grown together.

He picked up two more, one had a natural crease in It, and it looked like someone’s behind.

By the time the packing house manager reached Richard he could see Richard wasn’t an inspector.

Richard asked, “Why are you throwing all these tomatoes away”?

The manager said, “They are all defects, we can only pack perfectly round tomatoes here”.

If you want some of these tomatoes to take home, help yourself, they are free.

When Richard heard “Free” the gears in his brain went into action.

Richard couldn’t believe it, there were tons of perfectly good tomatoes, The only problem was they weren’t round, they were ugly, but what was wrong in using them to make soup or sauce, or even to feed the poor.

When Richard was back in his Miami office he started making phone calls, but no one he called said they wanted the irregular ugly looking tomatoes.

He had to think, and then it hit him, what about Paul Newman he made tomato sauce, and they were a “Do good company,” certainly they would be interested.

He got ahold of the Paul Newman Company buyer and offered him free odd- shaped tomatoes.

All Richard wanted was a commission to organize shipments.

They said thank you, but no thank you, we have all the tomatoes we need.

It was to become a bitter lesson for Richard.

He told me that he had learned that 40% of all produce in the U.S.A. ends up tossed in the garbage before it is sold, then another 28% gets thrown away after it’s sold.