The world changes; how do you like them apples?

CU-Boulder alumnus helps family fruit-growing business adapt to consolidated grocery chains, global shifts in the market

By Clint Talbott

Peter Verbrugge grew up in the family fruit business in Yakima, Wash., but by 14, he started planning to become an aerospace engineer. Ultimately, his path was terrestrial, drawing on his business and economics acumen to engineer the growth of his family farm and the viability of others.

The University of Colorado Boulder was (and is) one of the top “space” universities, with notable programs in aerospace engineering and astrophysics, so Verbrugge enrolled in the late 1980s.

But while taking business classes, “I figured out I didn’t want to be an aerospace engineer.” He wanted to study economics.



As a CU-Boulder student, Verbrugge spent summers working a five-acre red-delicious apple orchard he’d leased from his dad. “That’s what actually helped my way through college.”

Farming is no cake walk, Verbrugge notes, acknowledging that his particular strength was in marketing and sales—growing market share as opposed to fruit.

At the time, Verbrugge’s father was selling the farm’s apples through a third party. Verbrugge spent a summer working on a sales desk at that company, and he came away with two firm convictions about sales and marketing.

First, “I like this. I can do this. I know the product. I know how to match it up to the customers.” Second, “I told my dad, we need to do this in-house and sell our own product.” This was feasible partly because the family farm, Valley Fruit, had started a cold-storage and packing facility.

Verbruge graduated with a degree in economics 1991 and married fellow CU-Boulder alumna Staci (McDaniel) Verbrugge. They returned to Yakima, and he launched an in-house sales initiative.

I told my dad, we need to do this in-house and sell our own product.”As his role in the management of the farm grew with his dad’s transitioning out of day-to-day operations, the farm faced a new obstacle. “The whole retail industry changed almost overnight” with grocery consolidations, Verbrugge said.

Several mid-sized grocery chains that that had been buying his fruit were purchased by larger chains.

He was in a position in which his business was not large enough to service the growing grocery chains, but he was too large to be a niché seller.

“I was caught in between.” So in 1999, he developed a partnership with two other similarly situated family farms.

Together, they launched a new sales and marketing company, Sage Fruit. Together, they had the volume to sell to the large chains.

The business is now “vertically integrated.” The Verbrugge family farm grows 2,000 acres of apples, pears and cherries. It has a packing house and storage facilities that cover 40 acres.

About 40 percent of the fruit the company handles comes from outside growers. The partnership also has two other warehouses.

When Verbrugge entered the business, it was selling about 1 million boxes of apples annually. Now, his farm is selling 2.5 million boxes of apples and pears. Sage Fruit, the sales and marketing partnership, sells 10 million boxes of apples and pears and another million boxes of cherries.

You used to be able to support a family or even multiple families on 40 or 80 acres. It won’t do that anymore. … So the smaller growers are just selling or retiring.”A box of apples or pears is a 40-pound bushel. A box of cherries is 20 pounds.

The number of small family farms is declining, and those farms that survive tend to adopt strategies like that of the Verbrugge family.

“You used to be able to support a family or even multiple families on 40 or 80 acres,” he says. “It won’t do that anymore. … So the smaller growers are just selling or retiring.”

When small farms sell, they often sell to “vertically integrated” farm operations such as Sage Fruit.

Verbrugge describes vertically integrated model this way: “We grow, store and pack and ship and sell our own product, and for other growers, directly to retail customers in the United States wholesale.”

While Verbrugge’s fruit business has grown in response to changing markets, it retains vestiges of the family-farm era. While Verbrugge works on management, warehousing, sales and marketing, his brother and brother-in-law focus on the orchards.

The business of selling fruit is not the only thing that’s changed in recent decades. The fruit itself has changed. As Verbrugge notes, orchards used to focus on two varieties: red delicious and golden delicious.

Now apple growers produce more than 10 varieties that grow differently and have to be handled differently.

The new apples are hybrids, and a particularly popular—though labor-intensive—variety is the honey crisp. Now, cross-breeders and striving to become “the next honey crisp.”

As the industry continues to change—with consumer expectations of year-round fruit availability and incentives for larger-scale fruit suppliers—even family farms that have adapted must anticipate new challenges on the horizon.

Adapting means taking steps such as hiring trained CEOs and CFOs, setting up boards of directors, embracing “professional management” that traditional growers may not be equipped to do.

Staci Verbrugge says husband Peter is well-equipped to brave the new world of fruit production. He’s a good businessman who sees where the business needs to go, she observes.

He says the job is manageable because he loves it. “The people in the industry are great, all over the world. I can go to Chile or New Zealand and visit with apple growers. … It’s about building those partnerships and relationships.”

That skill was developed in college.

Studying at CU-Boulder helped Verbrugge get “out of my comfort zone” and become exposed to the broader world. “That’s what helps me. I deal with a lot of different cultures and different people. I go to Asia every year to meet with the Chinese and the Koreans and the Japanese, and understanding the cultural differences and how they shop … those are all things I learned here at CU, along with the basics of finance and business and economics.”

Verbrugge also offers some advice for today’s students: “Follow your interests. Don’t get stuck in something just because you think you want to be an aerospace engineer. Maybe you don’t.”

Clint Talbott is director of communications and external relations for the College of Arts and Sciences and editor of the College of Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Feb. 27, 2015