The companies, which filed for bankruptcy protection in February, have hired an investment banker to find a buyer. Well known for its O’Brien Family Farms U-Pick operation, the businesses sell strawberries in the winter and a mix of peppers, tomatoes, beans and squash in the fall and spring. They sell produce under the Berry Fine, Dover Classics and North River Vegetables brands. Despite posting $75 million in revenues in the last three years, the companies say labour costs and lower-priced Mexican products have made profitability “extremely challenging,” the company said in a news release.
“We have struggled to compete with Mexico as prices kept dropping and profits declined,” Tom O’Brien, president and founder of C&D, said in the release. “While I believe our berry quality is better than the product from Mexico, paying our employees a fair wage has always been important to us.”
According to heraldtribune.com, the family operation pays its employees by how much they harvest, which usually means upward of $12 an hour and at times even $20, depending on how quickly they work, O’Brien said in January. His workers can make more in an hour than some of their counterparts south of the border can make in a full day. The O’Briens farm roughly 800 acres of crops from Plant City south to Bradenton. They own about half of it and they lease the other half.
