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In the middle of California’s Salinas Valley,
the fictional setting of John Steinbeck’s novels
about the pathos of farm life and the “salad bowl”
of the world, sits Taylor Farms. The name is faintly
folksy, indicative of its roots in a family business
spanning back 70 years. But under the leadership of
founder, chairman, and CEO Bruce Taylor, Taylor Farms
is hardly a mom-and-pop operation—it has become
the world leader in the production of ready-made salad
fixings for the restaurant industry. Taylor Farms is
the second major salad company that the entrepreneur
and his team have built in 22 years.
That’s because Taylor is a third generation member
of one of the most innovative lettuce grower and producer
families in the country. His maternal grandfather, Bruce
Church, was an entrepreneur who began growing and shipping
iceberg heads from the Salinas Valley back in the 1920s.
Taylor’s father, Ted, took over the company and
successfully implemented novel techniques to wrap and
gas lettuce in order to give it a longer shelf life.
Having grown up on equal portions of leafy greens and
business talk at the dinner table, Taylor became a joint
business and development studies major at Cal, where
three of his grandparents and both of his parents had
attended. After marrying Cal classmate Linda Ruxton
(AB 78), he went on to Harvard Business School. In 1981,
Taylor joined the newest fledgling family business,
which he later named Fresh Express, and rose through
the ranks quickly to become president in 1985 and chairman
in 1991.
Along the way, Taylor built upon his father’s
long-held dream to create ready-to-eat salad for consumers,
and led the introduction of “salad in a bag”
in grocery stores across the country. In 1994, when
it became clear that the extended Taylor family had
differences about the future of the company, he left
to start Taylor Farms. His new company, which produces
fresh-cut vegetables and salads for large foodservice
customers such as McDonald’s, Subway, and Red
Lobster, has $400 million in annual revenues through
nine processing facilities in the United States and
Australia.
Taylor attributes his good fortune to the strategic
thinking and diversity of cultures and ideas he’s
been exposed to through nearly a life-long involvement
with Cal. Says Bruce, “Linda and I are blessed
to be part of the Cal family and we look forward to
continued interaction with the University.”
—Marguerite Rigoglioso
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