What Makes Our Staff Smile

Chris Mittelstaedt
Chief Banana
"One of my favorite memories is bringing my three kids down to the warehouse on a Sunday. I was removing bananas from our ripening area so that they could breathe properly for Monday delivery. While I stacked and unstacked bananas, worrying about which were ripening too fast and which too slow, my kids built a fort out of banana box tops. I remember looking at how happy they were and it made the hard work feel worth it. Plus it was a good reminder for life, like kids, we should strive to make things fun. Enjoy and be fruitful!"

Erik Muller
Chief Cultivator
"One day I gave a friend a tour of our facility and walked him through the steps of how we get our fruit to how we deliver the product to our customers. He was amazed by the level of detail and told me: "If you can create a system to educate and deliver tangible wellness to the workplace, you have an opportunity to make a very big impact on the world." Every day I try and fine tune the equation to help streamline our service."

Nicole Wagner
Customer Care Specialist
"On one of my first Banana giveaways, I was standing on a corner handing out bananas. I handed a banana to a woman who had already received one. As I turned, she threw the banana back and it hit me in the head. Although she ducked and ran I still think she was just trying to get the banana back in the box. The lesson I learned that bananas are great to eat but they aren't a toy. Someone can always lose an eye."

Erin Giordano
Marketing Manager
"In my first month on the job we were all sitting in the office and someone started humming a tune. It turned into a competition to see how many songs we could sing with fruit in the lyrics. So if you ever hear us singing happily in the background, at least you know it's about fruit!"

Dan Lemley
Distribution & Procurement Manager
"Although I've never spoken of this, I am actually the first banana man. You may remember back in 1999 that a large banana stood on the corner of California and Montgomery streets in San Francisco giving out fruit to passersby. That was me. Back then the dot com boom made it difficult to attract people's attention. We had to fight for turf against the Pepto Bismol giant bottle, a jester, and a giant nose promoting some sort of antihistamine. So many years and 4 banana suits later, we're still standing tall. P.S. just for the record, I'm not in the suit anymore and I've never seen the giant nose again. "

Jeff Koelemay
Production Manager
" I liked when we got pants. I was out on route making deliveries in a pair of old work pants while wearing my FruitGuys tshirt, when much to my surprise I suddenly split my inseams!!! I had to deliver for the rest of the morning. . . very carefully. Now we have sturdy FruitGuys uniforms. "

Rafael Garcia
Packing Foreman
"I really like the smell of all the fruit."