Herbs, Herbs, Herbs : Getting Rich by Getting Fresh

Paul Friedman was having trouble locating the cilantro field. Standing in the midst of some 100 acres of prime farmland, he could see the basil, the mint, the Italian parsley and the dill, all laid out in neat plots of weedless rows or housed in a futuristic maze of plastic-covered hothouses.

But he needed the cilantro to demonstrate the technical accomplishments that his company, The Green House, has achieved. A worker riding by on a tractor helped him out, pointing in the direction of a gentle, dirt-covered slope.

A few minutes later Friedman walked down a path, broke off some leaves and held them out to be tasted. The result was a revelation. The distinctive cilantro perfume was evident, more aromatic than usual, and the taste was gloriously full. Subtle, yet persistent. Pungent and citrus-like without the normal overbearing punch that typifies most commercially grown cilantro.

That, Friedman explained, is why his meticulously grown fresh cilantro could be priced at $1.39 a package, sit alongside bunches offered at 39 cents and quickly sell out. “Flavor is what we sell,” says Friedman, “not green leaves.”

No one better typifies the explosive growth in fresh herb sales than Friedman. In 1983 he started growing eight different herbs on 1.5 acres in Encinitas; nine years later he grows 24 varieties on 350 acres in California and Baja Mexico, and has become the nation’s largest producer and marketer of fresh herbs.

“Things have not slowed down once since we started,” he says. “They get better every year.”

One food industry trade journal estimates that supermarkets sell more than $150 million worth of fresh herbs annually. Similar estimates indicate that fresh herbs are one of the most lucrative crops for California farmers, yielding as much as $3,000 per acre.

These farmers are riding the evolutionary wave of American cooking--in all its manifestations. Fresh herbs have been used for centuries throughout the world for cooking and medicinal purposes, but for most of American history, cooks have made do with dried herbs. It’s been less than a decade since culinary herbs began hitting their stride here.

Mark Blumenthal, executive director of the Austin, Tex.-based American Botanical Council, says that several factors account for the public’s growing interest in fresh herbs. He traces their success to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when herbs were being touted as a healthful seasoning alternative to salt.

In the ‘80s, sales of culinary herbs increased further when processed foods were shunned for simpler, but fresher, food. Simultaneously, the leading chefs in America helped introduce consumers to the benefits of fresh herbs in a dazzling array of dishes that featured ingredients such as sorrel, purple basil, tarragon or lemon grass. Finally, the exploding interest in ethnic cuisines ushered in not only many new varieties of herbs but new uses for old favorites as well.

“People soon realized that the traditional American diet had been limited to a narrow spectrum of all the world’s available foods,” said Blumenthal. “Now these other cultures have introduced fruits and vegetables that we have never dreamed of. Fresh herbs are a keeper, not a trend. We will not look back and say, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember when people were eating fresh herbs in the ‘90s.’ ”

Despite the growing interest in fresh herbs, in 1985 many growers decided to abandon the business and cash in on the baby vegetable craze. “I decided to stick with herbs,” says Friedman, “and all my competition went on (to other crops). I’ve learned that to be the best you need to do only one thing, but do it well.”

He believes that the secret to producing fine herbs is to pay close attention to the natural oil content of the plant. The oil is what gives the herb its flavor; it is the reason that the flavor of fresh herbs is so much more complex than the flavor of dried ones. “Drying the herb,” says Friedman, “is drying the plant’s oil content and thus drying out the flavor.”

There are no good shortcuts to growing herbs, he says. “This is an extremely labor-intensive product; everything is hand-weeded. We only use the best parts of the plant, not the whole thing. And we will only harvest at certain times of the day so that the plant isn’t weakened.”

But the other big beneficiary of the growth in fresh herb sales doesn’t even harvest the plants. “In 1974, one of our employees went to the Ranch House Restaurant in Ojai,” says Frieda Caplan, founder of Frieda’s Inc. of Los Angeles, “came back and said we have got to get into fresh herbs. The only things being sold then in supermarkets were mint and chives.”

For the next 12 years, Caplan tried to encourage growers to raise herbs to the special needs of supermarkets--only to run into a series of problems.

The major obstacle was that cut fresh herbs have a very short shelf life, and grocers were loath to stock an item that lasted at most a few days. Some herbs, such as basil, had other problems. At temperatures below 55 degrees basil turns black; since most fresh produce is refrigerated at some point in the journey from farm to market, this posed a real logistic problem.

Searching for a solution to the perishability issue, Frieda’s experimented with selling live herbs in tiny pots, but the result was a “miserable looking little plant” that also suffered from a short shelf life.

Things changed about six years ago, when the Ekstrand family of Vista Verde Farms in Escondido began developing a potted herb that could withstand the rigors of shipment and supermarket display. They began to custom-grow 35 fresh herb varieties for Frieda’s. “At first we didn’t realize all the care needed to produce fresh herbs,” says Sharon Ekstrand. “I can’t tell you what we’ve dropped (financially) along the way.”

Today the herbs are sold in specially designed soil that can continue to feed the plant nutrients through a time-release system. If properly cared for, the plants can live for months in home kitchens as a renewable source of flavor.

“People always tell us that they don’t have a lot of room where they live but want to feel like they are growing something for themselves,” says Ekstrand. “They have a real concern about what went into their food and are real health-conscious.”

“Having a living herb plant lets people feel like they are going back to nature and doing something for themselves,” says Caplan. “We’ve really seen an explosion of interest in these plants.”

And neither are there any indications that fresh herbs will fade.

In a recent survey by a University of California publication, only 1.2% of the chefs queried said they thought herb usage was a “passing fad.” Another 8.4% stated that sales had probably reached their peak. But 90.4% of the respondents predicted that herb usage would continue to grow from their current record levels.