After high school Myers went to college at Gustavus, joined the Peace Corps, taught agriculture in Ecuador, and finally came back to the family farm in the early 1990s and started a CSA, or community supported agriculture, with his neighbors. He lived with the land, eating carrots he had grown, picking fruit from his trees. It was an experience he wished to share with others. Myers' yearning for a simple life, connected to the land, was a large driving force behind his foundation of FruitShare in 2003, a company that tries to establish as close a connection as possible between produce growers and consumers by providing in-season organic fruit, grown by sustainable growers, delivered as soon as possible. Good food is a luxury many don't know, Myers said. Myers wants to provide people with food like what he ate growing up as a kid. He wants to show all those scared away during middle school by bruised up apples and rust-colored lettuce that there is better fruit available. One just needs to know what to look for. It starts by going back to our roots. "People don't know what's in season anymore, you can get anything year round," he said. With technology, growing seasons are extended and products can be stored longer. People have become more disconnected from the land. It's something Myers would like to change by bringing some simplicity back to it all and reconnecting customers and growers. "It's not just boxes of fruit, it's boxes of stories," Myers said.
Ecuador RPCV Everett Myers wants to provide people with food like what he ate growing up as a kid
Not just fruit: FruitShare promotes healthy living, sustainable business
By Jonathan Kelly, Contributing Writer
Everett Myers
Growing up, Everett Myers was constantly surrounded by good food.
His father, an engineer by trade, kept a small family farm in Stillwater in addition to his day job and provided the family with fresh produce during the short Minnesota growing season.
Myers' family always had homegrown vegetables. In the summer they would eat fresh berries, carrots and corn, and what they didn't or couldn't use was frozen and enjoyed later.
It was a simpler life then.
After high school Myers went to college at Gustavus, joined the Peace Corps, taught agriculture in Ecuador, and finally came back to the family farm in the early 1990s and started a CSA, or community supported agriculture, with his neighbors.
He lived with the land, eating carrots he had grown, picking fruit from his trees. It was an experience he wished to share with others.
Myers' yearning for a simple life, connected to the land, was a large driving force behind his foundation of FruitShare in 2003, a company that tries to establish as close a connection as possible between produce growers and consumers by providing in-season organic fruit, grown by sustainable growers, delivered as soon as possible.
Good food is a luxury many don't know, Myers said.
Myers wants to provide people with food like what he ate growing up as a kid. He wants to show all those scared away during middle school by bruised up apples and rust-colored lettuce that there is better fruit available. One just needs to know what to look for. It starts by going back to our roots.
"People don't know what's in season anymore, you can get anything year round," he said.
With technology, growing seasons are extended and products can be stored longer. People have become more disconnected from the land. It's something Myers would like to change by bringing some simplicity back to it all and reconnecting customers and growers.
"It's not just boxes of fruit, it's boxes of stories," Myers said.
Take one grower, a woman who changed her name to Apple. Myers has known her and her family for more than 10 years, they talk weather, he gets updates about her family, and that is all relayed to the customer through the newsletter accompanying the fruit.
By utilizing the contacts he's made in his more than 20-year career as a grower and commercial buyer for a Minneapolis-based produce house, Myers has compiled a list of produce growers that he believes produce the tastiest food around.
His contacts in the produce industry have also helped him develop his unique method of distribution.
FruitShare doesn't own a single truck, nor a warehouse. Instead the company rents warehouse space so that they "don't waste energy on cooling an empty building for product that doesn't sit there."
They utilize free-space on already traveling trucks to transport their product, a concept Myers said he observed among California growers sharing equipment while he was a produce buyer.
"If I need something brought back [to Minnesota], I can call one of my trucker friends and say ‘hey, I've got this being picked tomorrow, do you have some space on your truck?'"
The system has yet to fail him.
From the warehouse, the product goes into a special box with extra strength designed by Myers himself and FedEx. On really hot days they insert a coolant bag that absorbs the moisture inside the box and it is loaded onto a standard FedEx truck to be delivered to schools, houses and companies all over the nation.
In addition to the fruit itself, Myers also helps source organic produce for clients such as St. Paul based Izzie's Ice Cream and he holds informational sessions for schools and corporations to promote healthy eating.
Myers hopes to keep the company viable in the future through a different twist on sustainability.
"Sustainable is where I hope to be in five years," he said. "A company is organic too, it grows how it wants to. I just want happy customers, people who like coming to work, and good tasting fruit."
For more information on Everett Myers and FruitShare visit www.fruitshare.com or follow (Fruitshare) on Twitter to receive updates and wellness tips.
