Robert Gonzales

My produce career began in 1980 as a buyer / inspector for A & P in the Fresno buying office. I inspected all the fruit purchased in the Central Valley, with two years in Nogales purchasing Grapes and Vegetables and another two years on the strawberry buying desk. I was a field buyer and inspector for Shurfine Central Corporation, and I conducted tours of the growing and packing facilities for their Midwest customers. My first sales job came three years later with the Gerawan Company in Sanger, California; at that time was one of the largest fruit shippers in the valley. In April of 1986 I worked at Blue Anchor in Sacramento, California as a regional sales manager for nine years. I had an opportunity to move to Idaho to become the sales manager for Snake River Fruit Growers, and spent the next fifteen years selling tree-ripened fruit. My expertise over the past thirty years has mostly been in the fresh fruit industry, focusing on cherries, peaches, apricots, Empress plums, apples, grapes, kiwi and pluots.