Here’s the Scoop on Guacamole
In a banana-colored factory in the little farming town of Santa Paula, workers in lab coats and surgical masks perform a delicate operation involving hoses, blenders and giant vats of green goo.
Their work is not widely known, and some of it is strictly confidential.
That’s just the way it is at the guacamole plant run by Calavo Growers of California. Company officials say they run the largest--and perhaps the only--commercial guacamole processor in the nation, and they don’t want their largest competitors, all based in Mexico, knowing what they are up to.
“It’s a little different than when you make guacamole at home,” said Calavo Vice President George Hatfield, his voice barely rising above the din on the processing floor where three production lines simultaneously pumped out the thick, avocado-based paste.
One line was mixing a top-secret recipe for El Pollo Loco, another churned out a chunky style available under the Calavo brand on grocery store shelves. The third was making nongenetically altered guacamole for customers in the United Kingdom.
“You’ll find our guacamole pretty much all over the world,” Hatfield said, beaming with pride, his hands wedged deep in the pockets of his avocado-colored jacket. “We are one of the real great stories in avocados.”
Opened in 1975, the Ventura County processing plant pumps out up to 20 million pounds of guacamole and other avocado-based items a year. The factory produces more than 100 sizes and varieties of products for restaurants and retailers, as well as for vendors who sell them under their own labels.
Last year, the plant accounted for about a quarter of Calavo’s $200 million in sales, a record for the company owned by a collection of growers from San Luis Obispo to San Diego. Company officials say the facility is responsible for about 40% of all the commercially produced guacamole sold worldwide.
Not bad for a venture launched merely to provide an outlet for fruit too scarred to go to market.
“In essence, Santa Paula is the guacamole capital of the world,” said Lee Cole, a Ventura County avocado grower who serves as president and chairman of the board for Calavo Growers.
The significance of Calavo’s position in the guacamole-making world is not lost on the more than 100 employees who work at the Santa Paula plant during peak season.
The processing jobs have been the foundation upon which they have built their lives, providing them the means to buy homes and cars, finance family vacations and help put kids through college.
The average length of service is 11 years, although many workers have been with Calavo for two decades and some started when the plant opened 26 years ago.
Still, little is known in the surrounding community about what goes on behind the walls of the big yellow building with the twin American flags out front.
“How would anyone know that such a small town produces the majority of guacamole in the world?” asked Al Valerio, who has worked his way up from smashing boxes to production manager in 11 years.
“The people who work here depend on this place,” he said. “Calavo has given us a lot, so we try hard to give back.”
That is obvious down on the production line, where workers refer to their task as the art of making guacamole. And it’s a high-tech one at that.
Using what look like fire hoses to siphon avocado pulp out of 1-ton bins, workers rely on computers to infuse the mash with spices and secret ingredients, before it is funneled into industrial-strength blenders and massaged into a fine paste.
A couple of weeks ago, production ramped up to 100,000 pounds of guacamole a day in preparation for the holiday season and upcoming Super Bowl, the biggest guacamole-eating day of the year.
The finished product flows through a metal detector--to ensure nothing has contaminated the supply--before being packaged, quick-frozen at minus 30 degrees and stashed in a refrigerated warehouse where the forklift drivers wear ski masks and thick winter coats.
Every 15 minutes, some guacamole is pulled off the line and put through a series of tests, including one to ensure it remains the right shade of green. In a guacamole plant, that is one of the most vital missions of all.
Most of that work is done in high-tech laboratories, although Calavo veteran Rosa Tobias does her testing amid the bustle of the processing floor.
“I like [the job] for the community that is here; it is like a family,” said Tobias, who started at the plant the same month it opened. “It is very pleasant. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t work here.”
The Santa Paula plant, along with a Calavo facility in Mexicali, Mexico, processes more than 40 million avocados a year. Most of the fruit comes from California and Mexico, and products from both factories are 100% kosher, with a rabbi visiting both plants once a month to inspect the process.
The heart and soul of the plant may be on the processing line, but its future is in a second-floor research and development laboratory, where technicians Rosa Morales and Aurora Dooling test everything from the shelf life of Calavo products to new items headed to market.
They also conduct blind taste tests, pulling employees off the processing line and putting their taste buds to work in the name of quality control.
“If you want to work here,” Hatfield warned, “you had better like the taste of avocados.”
