Packing Facility

Las Vegas Delight packs its own tomatoes in a first-class facility equipped with a three lane tomato grader. It sorts according to color and weight, dropping the fruit that passes the test into a chute where everything is hand loaded into 15-pound single-layer boxes. These are labeled, identifying the fruit as Las Vegas Delight Greenhouse Hydroponic Tomatoes, and placed on pallets holding 90 boxes each. The tomatoes are usually shipped on the very same day they are harvested and packed.

What is Las Vegas Delight?
Las Vegas Delight's vine ripened; hydroponiclly grown tomatoes are marketed all over the U.S. and parts of Canada. The current challenge is to produce enough product to meet demand. David Oppenheimer Group, City of Industry, California handles all sales. www.oppyproduce.com. Oppenheimer is the largest broker for greenhouse vegetables in the United States.

Las Vegas Delight's goal is to guarantee high quality, flavorful fruit for its customers. The company specializes in producing a beefsteak tomato variety. Seedlings are started in mid July and mature on site. It takes approximately 85 days from the time the seed is sown to when the harvest begins. Workers begin harvesting fruit, six days a week, in mid October and continue through mid June, when the cycle begins all over again. The 12-acre production facility can handle up to 120,000 plants.

"One thing we have going for us is that our tomatoes are remarkably consistent in quality, day in and day out," says Gerhart. "They are virtually identical in flavor and quality. That is what keeps us in the market place. Consumers are willing to pay a premium (generally three to seven times the price of conventionally grown field tomatoes) for a product they can take home and know that it is going to taste great, will have at least a two week shelf life."

"Right now we're unable to keep up with our requests for product," Gerhart says. "In one way, that's a pleasing situation to be in, but in another it's frustrating. Industry growth is definitely on the upswing, but eventually there will be enough players getting into greenhouse production to level things out."