Bruce Taylor, CEO of Taylor Farms
150 Main St., Salinas (877) 323-7374, taylorfarms.com
Twenty-five years ago, Bruce Taylor, newly unemployed and with four kids at home in Salinas, got together with a couple of investors and bought an almost derelict salad line processing plant in Florida and started selling shredded lettuce to McDonald’s. While the rest of the bagged lettuce industry was focused on grocery store sales, he went after the foodservice industry. The way he tells it, McDonald’s had 13,000 restaurants and they could either hire 13,000 teenagers and train them to cut the lettuce exactly the same way every day, or they could pay a set price and get excellent-quality shredded lettuce delivered fresh on time from Taylor Farms. Taylor Farms has continued to respond to market opportunities – not just pesky elections – like bringing organics pioneer Earthbound Farm back under local ownership last year (see above). Today it has 5,000 employees, gross sales of $4.5 billion and serves fresh fruit and vegetables to over 100 million customers a week.