As Mountain View Fruit Sales celebrates its 30th stone fruit season, the company credits a unique ripening process and special approach to customer service as keys to the success of its operation in California's San Joaquin Valley.

“We take pride in the fact that we are family owned,” said Krista Beckstead, director of marketing for Mountain View Fruit Sales. “We are hands-on from A to Z, all the way through the process.”

Krista Beckstead, Director of Marketing, Mountain View Fruit Sales

Beckstead reports Mountain View is wrapping up its conventional citrus program earlier than usual after a “great season.” Next is the stone fruit season, starting with apricots at the end of April and continuing to mid-October with late-season yellow peaches. “We are estimated to start a week ahead of normal,” said Beckstead.

Mountain View produces eight million cases of organic stone fruit, grapes, and citrus grown under the Simply Grown Organics brand on 8,000 acres from Fresno to Bakersfield, California. 

Included in the operation is a unique conditioning process for its Summeripe line of yellow and white peaches, plums, plumcots, and yellow and white nectarines. These varieties are picked at the height of ripeness and placed in a special conditioning room in the Mountain View warehouse. Precise temperature and humidity controls (data identified through a partnership with UC-Davis) “finishes what mother nature started,” Beckstead said. 

“If you leave stone fruit on the tree to ripen, it can become bruised and damaged during picking,” Beckstead said. “[Summeripe] prevents that but allows for a ripe product at point of purchase.” 

Like mangos and avocados, stone fruit can often perplex the customer or result in wasted fruit when the prime eating window expires. Summeripe allows the consumer to buy the size and firmness they prefer in their stone fruit, without needing to consider how the fruit will change as it ripens. “Buy and eat—get the joy right away,” said Beckstead.

That joy includes fruit with more flavor, texture, and flesh pressure— “a better eating experience,” said Beckstead.

This unique ripening process results in a distinct product for Mountain View. “No other stone fruit grower-packer-shipper uses this process,” Beckstead said. “[Summeripe] gives us an edge against competitors because it is such a quality product.” 

“Buy and eat—get the joy right away." - Krista Beckstead

Summeripe’s premium produce joins the company's traditionally harvested Summertime and Summersweet varieties of peaches, nectarines, and plums. The Simply Grown Organics brand appears in large and small retailers nationwide in 2-pound bags and corrugated bulk boxes.

Many of Mountain View’s growers are also celebrating their 30th season with the company. “A lot of families that grow for us have been with us a long time,” Beckstead said. “Third- and fourth-generation families are operating on the same land.”

These farm families don’t just work in the orchards for Mountain View. One of the company’s conventional grape growers also works in sales, said Beckstead. “If a customer is unhappy about quality, they can address it because they were in the dirt with it,” she said. “They go out and check their orchards and then go into the sales office. They’re out there living it.”