Frozen Fruit Company Partners with 'Hub Farms'

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

One grocery store offering that has been on the rise through the pandemic and beyond has been frozen fruit. Seal the Seasons started as a college business at a local farmers market and has scaled to offering high quality local frozen fruit to most areas of the country. Co-founder Alex Piasecki says growing from one location to a national presence was tricky.

Piasecki… “Our limitation was our ability to produce, but we saw the product selling well. And you know, eventually like Harris Teeter came on and we knew we needed more help to produce cause we were gonna be able to meet that scale and that quality out of the kitchen. It was a big old disaster.”

That’s when they decided to partner with hub farms to process and pack local offerings.

Piasecki… “We will be the sales and marketer of Seal the Seasons, but producing, growing, freezing, washing, packaging, that really belonged at the farm where it was being grown. So we actually partnered with the hub farm in every region of the country. And they kind of act as the hub to smaller farms that bring their blueberries, strawberries, peaches, cherries, you know depending on where you are in the country. And they all, for that entire region, whether you'd be in, you know, the northwest in Oregon, Washington, California, you have a different hub farm where those smaller farmers are bringing their produces to get washed, frozen, and ultimately packaged into packages to be sold at the grocery store.”

Piasecki said this approach has allowed them to grow and maximize the value for the farmer of their fruit.