Grimmway Farms

Grimmway Farms was started by the Grimm brothers in the southern San Joaquin Valley in central California in the 1960s. Grimmway is the largest grower, producer, and shipper of carrots in the world. Along with carrots, Grimmway Farms produces potatoes, citrus, and carrot juice varieties. It is headquartered in Bakersfield, California.

Grimmway Farms traces its history to the mid-1960s, when Rodney Grimm, who was in college, and Robert Grimm, who was only in eighth grade, started farming five acres of sweet corn on their grandfather's chicken farm in Anaheim, California. Their first employees were their cousins and two sisters, who sold the corn from produce stands along the roadside. Through the years, they added other crops, but by the late 1970s, Rod and Robert became deeply in debt. In the early 1980s, the brothers saw a promising future in the carrot farming business in the San Joaquin Valley, so they relocated to Kern County. "After the concept of baby carrots was successfully test-marketed by another company in Los Angeles, 'it quickly turned into a race to see which processors could put in equipment fast enough to serve the emerging market,' Robert Grimm later recalled. He considered the name 'a happy accident' for the baby carrots, while it did nothing to dissuade shoppers from thinking they were buying an immature root vegetable." By the mid-1990s, the company was able to process millions of pounds of baby carrots a day.

In 1998, Rod Grimm died of cancer at the age of 51. Robert Grimm then took over as company president. "We had a lot of respect for each other, and shared a common work ethic and approach to religion," Robert Grimm said about his older brother. Rod Grimm was known for his generosity to the communities where his business flourished and for sponsoring scholarships for children of his employees. "A decade later, [Grimmway Farms] began buying other companies, including two top carrot-packing firms, to become the industry leader. By 2000, they had reportedly grown into a $350-million operation with five plants in the United States and Scotland and products shipped to more than 20 countries." Grimmway Farms have been recognized for boosting the sales of the baby carrot by positioning it as a healthful snack and packaging it in ways that make it easy to put in kids' sack lunches and serve on airplanes. Today, baby carrots account for about 70% of carrot sales at Grimmway; Kern County's largest employer with 7,000 employees. Grimmway and Bolthouse Farms, a competitor also based in Bakersfield, CA, produce almost 90% of California's carrots. In 2001, Grimmway Farms purchased King Pak Farms. King Pak was a thriving potato growing, packing, and shipping operation in Edison, California.

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