Church Brothers Farms, Salinas, Calif., and FiveStar Gourmet Foods, Ontario, Calif., partnered to expand product portfolios in their respective areas of expertise within the retail and foodservice segments of the fresh produce business.

Both companies will collaborate on resources, infrastructure, logistics, best-in-class food safety practices and facilities. 

“This legal partnership creates a vertically integrated program for FiveStar Gourmet Foods, and we are extremely excited to work with such a well-known, established company like Church Brothers Farms,” says Tal Shoshan, chief executive officer of FiveStar Gourmet Foods. “A grower-direct supply helps further our new product innovation especially within packaged salads like blends and kits, which FiveStar plans to impact in a big way, similar to how we impacted the salad bowl category.”   

“This partnership allows us to expand into regional processing with FiveStar’s state-of-the-art facilities in California and Florida, and quickly scale up to create new, innovative value added-items for our customers,” adds Brian Church, chief executive officer of Church Brothers Farms. “FiveStar will leverage our strong land base of more than 40,000 conventional and organic crop acres to expand into the bagged salad category.” 

There will be no change in ownership or personnel, and each company will continue to operate independently.