Major Daily Newspaper Highlights an Organic Food Business
San Diego's daily newspaper, U-T San Diego (formerly The San Diego Union-Tribune), in its Business Section, April 9, 2013, featured Organics Unlimited, a San Diego business that imports and then distributes organic bananas to customers such as Whole Foods and Jimbos. The bananas come from Ecuador and Mexico.
In this nearly full-page article, lavishly illustrated, the paper describes the company's founding and current banana and distribution business whose sales now top $10 million.
The company competes against giants such as Dole, Del Monte, and Chiquita but unlike these Goliaths all its bananas are organic! However, Chiquita is also a customer, for it buys Organics Unlimited bananas and under the Chiquita name distributes them in Japan. Moreover, a Japanese wholesaler discovered Organics Unlimited and now Japan gets organic bananas directly from Organics Unlimited and indirectly via Chiquita.
A Woman Owns This Organic Business--And She Cares!
San Diego's Organics Unlimited was founded and is owned by Mayra Velasquez who as a sixth-grader in Mexico began helping her parents' banana plantation business export from Colima and Jalisco in the 1970s, because they knew no English and she did.
Mayra wants people to know that "organic" is not just a label. It helps the environment, it promotes healthy living, and the more awareness of this, the better!
She distributes not only under the Organics Unlimited label but also under the GROW brand that stands for "grow resources and opportunities for workers." GROW adds a surcharge of 60 cents per box of fruit to support funding that improves the lifestyle of workers in the fruit growing regions.
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