Comstock's magazine 0118 - January 2018 | Página 36

n TASTE
Dan Chan, boxing produce decades ago, after
he and his cousin first returned to Sacramento
to take over the family business.
36
comstocksmag.com | January 201 8
and delivery process. The days of buy-
ing products from unknown sources are
long over. This more extensive tracking
doesn’t require more manpower, but
rather greater attention to detail at each
step in the process. For packaged goods,
including items such as salads or ber-
ries in plastic clamshells, a label must
be affixed that tracks the origin down
to the plot of land where the contents
were grown.
But as the company continues to
move toward the future, Tom and Dan
are also careful to honor the past. In fact,
in their office lobby there is a timeline
that traces General Produce’s develop-
ment, complete with old photographs
demarcating certain milestones. One
such photo is of Dan as a younger man,
boxing peppers in the warehouse. It was
taken shortly after the cousins had left
behind their lives in the Bay Area to re-
turn home and ultimately take over the
business. Neither of them knew at the
time they would go on to successfully
run the family company for many de-
cades, guided by their complementary
skill sets. Tom, sorting fruit just outside
the frame when the image was cap-
tured, remembers asking Dan if he ever
thought about how they’d traded corpo-
rate jobs in San Francisco in favor of the
same tasks they did as summer work-
ers way back in high school. They both
remember with a laugh that Dan told
Tom no, and to “just shut up and bag
the oranges.” n
Zack Quaintance has more than a de-
cade of experience working in the media.
His writing has appeared in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, the Dallas Morning News
and the Austin American-Statesman. He
lives in Northern California. On Twitter @
zackquaintance.