The Fruit Guru

What is it about those Strawberries in Tropical Smoothie Café’s Smoothies??

Strawberries are a spectacular fruit and they make for a great Smoothie! In fact, the Strawberry Commission recently came out with a definitive study that indicated strawberries to be essentially a food with Super Food like qualities. More to come on this soon!

When we pick the strawberries for Tropical Smoothie Café we pay close attention to quality. We mainly go for a high Brix levels and strawberries that are grown in areas where they don’t over-irrigate the fruit. Mexico is perfect for this because they give the fruit enough water but not too much so they have a very low incidence of mushy /soggy fruit which we have experienced in other regions of the world that we now try and steer clear of.

Brix is used in the food industry for measuring the approximate amount of sugars in fruits, vegetables, juices, wine, and in the sugar manufacturing industry as well. After years of being in the smoothie industry and fine tuning what customers are looking for, we are very picky about Brix levels in our strawberries. The strawberries we use at Tropical Smoothie Café have a Brix range from 8 – 9+ and this is what makes all the difference between a good smoothie and a GREAT smoothie. The normal strawberry average Brix around the world is 7.2. Most of our berries for Tropical Smoothie Cafe are about 25% sweeter than the normal strawberry because we have the ability to purchase where the best fruit is…we stay ahead of ourselves and purchase this specification.

Now you know one of the many attentions to detail that sets apart Tropical Smoothie Café’s Real Fruit Smoothies from our competitors! It’s all in our strawberries!

Click the Gallery Link below to view photography from one of our principal strawberry farmers shaded growing process. This growth process is not seen almost anywhere else in the world.

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Looking for fruit in all the right places. Where does the good fruit grow?

The best and sweetest strawberries for processing at this time are planted in Mexico, Peru, as well as Argentina, Chile, and of course California. There is also acreage in other parts of the US but it is fairly limited. Did anyone say Europe? Yes, Poland has very good fruit, but not high quantity for smoothies and the European’s don’t like to share or sell at pricing that works for our market.

Gary started working in the industry in 1990, almost 20 years ago for a company that was later acquired by Dole. After the various sales and production capacities in the frozen fruit industry it became apparent to me that the chef’s wanted fruit with the best flavor and production wanted fruit that was easiest to process. These 2 objectives are not an obvious fit...kind of like peanut butter and chocolate. However after training the plants to locate and process fruit that is full ripe with maximum flavor they get on board and produce some really great product (peanut butter) which we secure at below market pricing (the chocolate).

Our planning and purchasing procedure uses our real time numbers and forecasts and projects those production needs for the next 6 months to 1 year. We are always contracting and working with the plants up to a year in advance especially when the overall crop looks like a tight supply.

In search of the perfect fruits for smoothies.

Along with keeping costs down for the franchisees, our focus everyday is how can the franchisees make a better smoothie than other stores in the industry?

At Patagonia Foods our mission is simply to find the best fruit in the world and make them available at the lowest cost possible. If we do this everyday then we are doing our customers the best service that we know how.