Knowing where to begin the story for a company like Stemilt is complicated. It dips as much as it summits—a tale both sophisticated and raw, fortunate and arduous, but always elaborate.
As I sat with West and Tate Mathison and their brother-in-law, Robin Graham, the immensity of the task loomed before us. With such a foothold and legacy in the treefruit industry, you might assume they would find my questions easy, having told their story over generations. But there is a humbleness and gratitude to the way they lean into the conversation. The pauses that envelop the spaces between us, the inward motion of their thoughts, the laughter and furrowed brows—these elements tell me how each time they speak, the task carries forward their own personal evolutions as well as the company’s.
Telling a story changes you, especially if you are invested. If you are lucky, it can change an industry.
“Basically, the company started 60 years ago from a crop disaster,” Robin, the General Manager of the orchard company, Stemilt Ag Services, tells me. “I know this part of the story has been told many times before, but I think it’s always worth putting in. What do you guys think?”
Tate and West both crack a smile. It’s off to the races.
“My grandfather, Tom, was a very curious learner. He had overcome tremendous adversity as a young person, especially when he entered World War II. He was an infantryman in the Pacific Theater and laid in a ditch for 18 hours,” West, President of the company, describes, his eyes intense as he remembers the story. “He made this pact with God. He said, ‘If I survive this, I’m not going to worry anymore.’”
When he walked out of that ditch and into the sun, Tom did more than simply survive; he started to lead. Despite the family farm being only a small plot of land yet to generate significant revenue in 1947, he led all the same. One small cherry at a time. Looking at adversity as opportunity bred a curious ambition in Tom, one that drove him to hungrily try and solve every problem that came across his plate.
But not without adversity. In 1958, as the story goes, Tom picked 100 tons of cherries and sent them into the warehouse. He received just $88 in credit.
West tells me this story with such admiration that I cannot figure out, for the life of me, which corner it will round next. But it changes my expectations, encourages me to sit back in my chair and listen before perceiving. So, I lay down the picture in my mind and listen as the family turns land into a legacy.
“Imagine what it was like to pick 100 tons of cherries back then. You had a lot of work to do because the trees were upwards of 25 feet tall,” Tate, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, says, leaning forward in his own chair as he pictured the challenge. The industry did not have the technology yet to streamline such an endeavor. “And then to only get $88. You couldn’t even buy the boots for half the pickers with that kind of money.”
But Tom, his family, and the Stemilt team did it anyway, and, in 1959, Tom and his cherries traveled to the New York market by train to be auctioned off. A cherry in those days did not travel well. Or rather, they did not have the luxurious supply chain we have today to maintain quality and flavor. Facing this challenge, Tom got curious, and the bug took him to California to study how Italian families harvested cherries.
“In California, the families got up early in the morning with these huge picking crews and would stop picking by 10 or 11 o’clock before the fruit got hot. If the fruit got hot, it would start to metabolize, and the cherries would lose their freshness and firmness. They would then hydrocool the fruit with ice-chilled water before loading it onto the rail car,” West says. “This changed everything for our grandfather.”
He took these lessons back to the family co-op, hoping to drastically change the output and quality of the farm’s cherry crop. But, Tate reminds me, Washington state was not the crossroads of trade or the epicenter of treefruit yet. It was the Wild West.
"My grandfather, Tom, was a very curious learner. He had overcome tremendous adversity as a young person, especially when he entered World War II. He was an infantryman in the Pacific Theater and laid in a ditch for 18 hours. He made this pact with God. He said, ‘If I survive this, I’m not going to worry anymore."
West Mathison, President, Stemilt
“So you’re on an outpost on the frontier, and you’re led by Tom, a high school dropout, where his mom is running the farm, right? And he’s flat-ass broke. I mean, there is absolutely no hope to make this place pay,” Tate says. His laughter tees up the next part of the story. “But leave it to our grandfather. He didn’t take no for an answer. Once he found a way to implement these new practices, his fruit went to auction, and they got $35 a box for a 20–25 lb box.”
I can do the math on this new equation, thankfully, where three boxes made up the entire return Tom received for his 100 tons of cherries the year before.
Two sides of the same coin. Flip it and see the disaster. Flip it again, and you see opportunity.
Tom went on to found Stemilt Growers in 1964 in a small-scale facility he constructed to pack his
own cherries.
Today, Stemilt is one of the most impactful treefruit growers and marketers in the industry, helping the Wenatchee Valley dominate the category with freshness, innovation, and a little thing West and Tate keep referring back to: Authenticity.
We all hear stories that feel more like magic and metaphor than reality and deduction—Tom and his knack for spinning a defeat into a win, creating a moment of packaging ingenuity from a cherry slick on the produce floor. Kyle Mathison, Tom’s son, tending the orchards and welcoming the cool air to come kiss the fruit good night at the close of the day.
Where some might see hyperbole, the family sees authenticity and a promise to be better than the standard despite the odds. This authenticity is at the heart of the Mathison family and its growing community of family and friends. I know it’s their reality—but, dang, it feels like magic: 60 years of ripening toward a reward that pays off with each cherry picked and team member onboarded.
For 60 years, one of the ways this magic manifested was in innovative thought and action.
“Our grandfather taught us to evolve the goal from simply selling quality fruit to selling programs and directly to retailers,” West says. “He created an opportunity to connect with the shopper and would not let it pass.”
This move brought Stemilt closer to the point of sale and closer to the consumer, and to building a brand story. Finally, the sea of apples that once divided him from the consumer was the element that connected him.
“Even before the Washington Apple Commission started putting stickers on apples, Grandpa started putting Stemilt stickers on apples,” Tate says. “It was a bold move. Grandpa broke through the well-developed system of accessing the marketplace where the identity of the fruit can get lost and found a way to let consumers know where their fruit came from and who grew it.”
This occurred in the ’80s and ’90s. Tom was one of the first to put stickers on apples. Stemilt’s now Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Mike Taylor, used to say, ‘It was like shooting fish in a barrel.’
“I mean, we’re the only ones with stickers on our apples. Everybody bought from us first,” Tate adds.
I am mesmerized by the way that this story unravels as it forms. Or rather, how the story of the apple industry was not an organic evolution, but a series of moments tied together by one company stopping the train and demanding: We can do better.
"We want people to cut open an apple and what comes out is us. And it’s a generational journey when that’s taking place. When we say ‘win at the point of sale,’ it’s about how we engage the person who’s taking it home. We let them know they are a part of our story."
Tate Mathison, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Stemilt
Take the slips and falls in a grocery store, which would skyrocket during cherry season as consumers cherry-picked their fruit and left many discarded on the ground.
“In the late ’90s, Grandpa saw they were selling candy in these catch-weight bags. He saw an opportunity there for cherries. If we could get cherries bagged and into the store, then the store manager could just put the bag on display,” Tate continued.
Retailers did not see this as a solution at first, but a break from tradition—until Tom developed a bagging machine and told his team to put the bagged fruit on a load to Meijer—no questions taken.
If you know anything about Roger Pepperl, Stemilt’s retired Director of Marketing, you know he was a buyer at Meijer before he worked for Stemilt. Roger received those bagged cherries and phoned up Mike Taylor to inquire passionately.
As fate would have it, the bags sold without hesitation.
And just like that, everything changed.
This strong Stemilt pillar of innovation in practice, thought, and action surfaced in many ways over the years. The tenet manifested in in-house research and development; branding and marketing new varieties like Rave® apples, Happi Pear®, and Aura® apples; and sustainability practices and products like the recently released recyclable 4-pack of apples called EZ Band—all meant to be easy to stock, shop, and help retailers capture organic rings at the register.
The family took Tom’s vision and entered a new era of irrigation, ag tech collaboration, and a new Wenatchee innovation center with progressive apple and pear lines, welcoming new post-harvest environments driving scale and efficiencies which could then be passed on to the consumer.
“So much is happening now. Just look at this time frame from 2017 to 2027: Red Delicious was our biggest variety; by 2027, Cosmic Crisp® will be our highest volume crop—driven by demand,” West says. “There’s this big shift going on. We have a great orchard mix of all the latest and greatest flavors. Envy, Cosmic Crisp, SweeTango, Rave, and then this gigantic cherry program that goes end to end. All this is built upon decades of planning and good execution.”
This past year, Stemilt took on volume growth of about 33 percent, and that’s really because the last two years were impacted by weather.
“Weather in Washington the last two years materially impacted the crops in ways we never would’ve imagined. So we’re really excited about this ramp-up in volume. We feel like we got the right flavors and will be able to drive freshness even better than before,” West adds. “We have a strong consumer-facing brand with items like Lil Snappers® and pouch bag programs promoting good eating and increasing volume.”
New apple tree varieties are coming down the pipeline that will have huge size and great firmness. And Stemilt also has varieties going 10 days later than the ones they have now.
"You can be the best horticulturist in the world, but if you can’t communicate what needs to be done to your team and have that executed, then it doesn’t mean anything. The spirit of Stemilt is very culture-focused. It’s in our DNA to cultivate people."
Robin Graham, General Manager, Stemilt Ag Services
In addition, Stemilt’s organic stonefruit program, currently operated by the Douglas family, will have the same persona as the late cherry deal, where it’s unique to anywhere else in the world. Like most of Stemilt’s orchards, the land sits in a great locale; super dry which promotes optimum maturity and new lines to handle the gentler needs of the fruit.
“The focus has always been on freshness, but it’s a generational journey and it doesn’t just happen. There are theaters in which freshness is destroyed. Grandpa saw it in the orchard, first and foremost—where we will always battle Mother Nature,” Tate says. “But we continue to drive investments in technology here and get fruit into the cold chain in increasingly innovative ways.”
Tate then shifts a bit closer to the consumer and the evolving idea of point of sale.
“When you think of point of sale, you think of a display at a grocery store. Well, I feel like that isn’t necessarily the only arena we need to operate and optimize,” Tate says. “Take EZ Band. It is not just a four-pack of apples. It’s really a value proposition for the end consumer to say, ‘Oh, instead of hand selecting organic apples that are in a different location than the rest of the apple display—because produce managers aren’t co-mingling—you give the retailer an opportunity to stock something within your conventional apple display.”
It’s 100 percent paper, recyclable, and solves a lot of solutions for retailers because now, just like the cherries, instead of taking 88 apples and putting them on display, a retailer puts 12 packs on display.
“And how many shoppers does it take to pick up 88 apples versus 12?” Tate asks. The group smiles. “Then what happens at the point of sale, there’s an authenticity that you can build into your product.”
This is where Stemilt wants to live—at this intersection of community, innovation, and authenticity. Stemilt cultivates people and delights consumers through excellence.
“We want people to cut open an apple and what comes out is us. And it’s a generational journey when that’s taking place. When we say ‘win at the point of sale,’ it’s about how we engage the person who’s taking it home,” Tate continues. “We let them know they are a part of our story. Few other industries impact families more than the treefruit business. You think about the families that are in the orchards. All the harvest that happens: the cultivation, storage, packing, and shipping.”
The gravity of it all is immense.
“Being authentic is really the only way you win at the point of sale. You may think, ‘Well, it’s just about packaging, right?’ No, it’s not about that. That’s just a scoreboard. You do it by being authentic because if it comes back to you and you’re not authentic, it doesn’t work,” West emphasizes.
This desire to change the way business and relationships play out at the point of sale is only achieved by starting the process of authenticity and innovation at the beginning. Where the fruit takes root, and with the hands that cultivate it.
“Horticulturally, it is amazing for us as a team to break these puzzles down and work on them. The other side is innovation in the orchard, and we’re definitely at a precipice in perennial treefruit. We have a little more complicated activities than row crops. It’s tough to automate harvest, and it’s a massive endeavor, but we are up for it,” Robin says. “There are some exciting things in front of us today that are functional. We’ve been at the forefront of trying to help different companies develop their products. I think the thing we’re most excited about right now is the automation of tractor and spray operations.”
"When you intersect with authenticity, it’s contagious. It’s like a sports team. Positive energy is contagious. Negative energy is the same way. Thousands of people get deployed daily in these orchards, and consumers will never see them or know them, but they’re known through these products. That’s powerful."
Tate Mathison
As inherently dangerous activities, it’s exciting for Stemilt to be able to automate some of those elements, making them safer for its teams and increasing efficiency overall.
“It’s no secret it’s a difficult time on the orchard side of things, and we just have to be focused on increasing efficiency. Some of the technology changes we’ll see over the next few years will be pretty dramatic. And again, for our team, these are fun things just to wake up to and work on,” Robin continues.
As cost inflation and changing export markets impact the industry, margins become extremely thin, which makes nailing execution essential. Putting on Tom’s hat, Robin sees the challenges for what they are, but knows that opportunities can be found in each circumstance.
“You can be the best horticulturist in the world, but if you can’t communicate what needs to be done to your team and have that executed, then it doesn’t mean anything,” Robin says. “The spirit of Stemilt is very culture-focused. It’s in our DNA to cultivate people. We’re the first treefruit company to be certified by the Equitable Food Initiative; that’s greatly impacted us in the field methods to bring continuous improvement to our day-to-day activity.”
Tate echoes Robin’s beliefs, adding that there is a strong sense of ownership, pride, and the ability to be a part of something.
“When you intersect with authenticity, it’s contagious. It’s like a sports team. Positive energy is contagious. Negative energy is the same way,” he says. “Thousands of people get deployed daily in these orchards, and consumers will never see them or know them, but they’re known through these products. That’s powerful.”
And when you think about it, it all stems from how Stemilt cultivates its people.
“You need to leverage the human spirit around something meaningful,” West emphasizes. “I feel like we tap into that often here at Stemilt, and they’re excited about our future around that. Whether that is with EZ Band, new products, innovation, automation—it’s really the byproduct of people being their best version of themselves here at work and having psychological safety to express themselves in a way where they’re their purest form. And so it’s a journey.”
We never truly arrive there, West concludes.
But they are always moving toward it.
Sixty years. 720 months. Or more than 21,915 days into a journey where every moment is an opportunity to change the path that they are on—this generational growth and intense dedication infused by the hand in the field to the hand on the shelf.
This story changes even now as the cursor blinks. Soon to be shifted to other tasks in the day.
And, as this story germinates into a new era for Stemilt, so will its people. 
