The meeting began with a stirring moment of reverential gratitude from the eloquent Jen Casey.
This was followed immediately by a very irreverent prescription from our resident Rotarian physician Dr. P LaPorté. Long story short, our beloved comrade Art Bukowski is the most recent recipient of the dreaded smart pills, owning to an honest, yet ill-timed outburst at a previous meeting.
In an exciting update, last year thanks to our club matching program $26,716 was donated to area nonprofits.
In other news, Stacey Foster has just celebrated her 31st anniversary with Rotary! (Please free to send her a congratulatory note using the address Rotary C/O Stacey Foster 202 E. Grandview Parkway, Suite 200 TC 49684
Jen Casey returned to the screen to introduce our speaker of the afternoon Shoreline Fruit CEO Jason Warren. A lifetime TC resident, Jason comes from a fifth-generation cherry farming family.
During his presentation, Jason elucidated our membership on the recent history of Shoreline, which currently produces 12 million pounds of dried fruit annually. Their team of around 800 employees also helps produce 220,000 gallons of concentrated juice each year.
The Shoreline Group is led by two farming families, the Veliquettes and the Montagues (okay not, really; the second family are the Gregorys). The group also produces a number of other fruit offerings and concentrates.
Per Jason, due to their adherence to rigorous health standards, Shoreline was already well-positioned to deal with the additional challenges of COVID. However, he said they have brought on additional leadership and experts to help improve their safety standards even further. Despite these precautions, the virus still led to a brief, but dramatic reduction in staff following an outbreak.
Jason said increased demand due to consumers stocking up on canned goods has greatly benefited their company and our region's growers. Among other positive impacts, this has allowed Shoreline to temporarily increase worker wages to help families deal with these challenging times. On the other hand Shoreline PPE and transportation cost have greatly increased, and labor challenges persist. But overall, Jason anticipates COVID markets will be a considerable boon to Shoreline.
Jason wrapped up by providing detailed answers to club member questions on weather conditions, foreign cherry concentrate being dumped into US markets, and distribution to Florida.
