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Chris Monson, left,
jokes with the audience alongside Gary and Susan Snow during a discussion of the Tabletree juice business at a meeting
in Yellow Bay.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
co
Cherry Juice Business Moves to the Flathead Tabletree juice company announces plans to turn unwanted cherries into pro t for local growers
BY JUSTIN FRANZ OF THE BEACON
YELLOW BAY – Every year, any- where from 400,000 to 600,000 pounds of cherries picked along Flathead Lake are thrown away.
Culled cherries are those not good enough to be sold at supermarkets and they make up more than 30 percent of the valley’s annual crop. But now a Canadian company is moving south with a plan to turn those unwanted berries into pro t for local growers.
Tabletree Montana, LLC, announced plans on March 21 to open a juicing facil- ity at Finley Point to a large group of growers in Yellow Bay. If everything goes according to plan, Tabletree will be turn- ing berries into juice this summer.
“Cherry growers don’t often cheer for culled cherries, but this is di erent,” said Bruce Johnson, president of the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers, Inc.
Gary and Susan Snow from Creston, British Columbia, founded Tabletree Enterprises in 2010 and since then have won numerous awards for their products. The husband-and-wife team created the company because they were looking for a way to use the culled cherries at their farm. They developed a technology to turn those unwanted berries into juice and today sell numerous juices and sauces. In 2012, the company won rst place in the pure juice category at the World Juice Awards and their apple juice took second place the following year.
Tabletree’s juices and sauces are currently available online, in western Canada and at Withey’s Health Foods in
Tabletree juice. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON Kalispell.
Looking to grow their business, the Snows chose to move to the Flathead, in part because it was a better business environment and also because they’re familiar with the area. Before moving north 20 years ago, they lived in the Flat- head Valley for a number of years.
The Snows signed a contract with the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers ear- lier this month to use the group’s Finley Point warehouse for their juicing facility. The warehouse is where local cherries are gathered for shipment to Washington to be processed and sold by the Monson
Fruit Company. Other than the six or so weeks during the harvest, the warehouse sits vacant for the rest of the year. Now it will be open for a few more months mak- ing cherry and apple juice. Susan Snow said she expects the company will hire 10 to 15 people, and the company hopes to produce 150,000 bottles of its specialty juice annually.
The Flathead Valley produces about 2 million pounds of cherries every year.
The facility will also be processing culled cherries from Washington. In partnership with the local growers and Monson, freight trucks that bring Flat- head cherries west will now return home full of culled cherries. In the past, the trucks were empty on the return trip.
“We want to help give growers a fair return for their secondary fruit,” Gary Snow said. “It’s not going to put a ton of money in your pocket it, but it’s going to help cover your costs.”
The Flathead Lake Cherry Growers received a Growth Through Agriculture grant through the Montana Department of Agriculture that will allow them to complete renovations of their warehouse necessary for Tabletree to construct the juice plant. The Snows said they are opti- mistic they’ll be able to expand the oper- ation as soon as next year.
Chris Monson of Monson Fruit said the partnership between the growers association, his company and Tabletree is an ideal one.
“We’re really excited about this because this is going to bene t all of our growers,” he said.
jfranz@ atheadbeacon.com
www.T
MARCH 30, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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