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NY Ag Innovation Center Helps Farmer and Baker Sell Fancy Packed Peaches to Upscale Markets
With help from the NY Ag Innovation Center, Western New York fruit grower Jim Bittner and baker Michael Di Camillo are selling fancy-packed peaches to upscale markets nationwide. Peaches Niagara, packed in designer jars, are found nationally at Neiman-Marcus and in Manhattan at such retailers as Whole Foods and Bergdorf-Goodman’s.
Bittner, principal partner in Singer Farms, Appleton, NY, and Di Camillo, vice-president of Di Camillo’s Bakery, a family-run bakery established in 1920 in Niagara Falls, NY, worked with NY Ag Innovation Center food processing consultants to translate Anita Vespa Di Camillo’s recipe for canned peaches from the family kitchen to fit the bakery’s commercial production equipment.
“We needed to test the recipe on a larger scale at the Food Venture Center in Geneva to be able to can 150 jars at a time instead of 10 or 20,” Di Camillo says. “After we finished there, the Ag Innovation Center consultants also helped us test the process at the bakery when we began using our own equipment.”
Di Camillo says he was looking at importing jarred peaches from Italy about six years ago when he realized “right in my own backyard is a famous fruit belt and we could easily incorporate regional fruit into a product that can be promoted for its unique qualities.”
Initial canning efforts began in his mother’s Niagara Falls kitchen and went through four different varieties of peaches between her home and the test kitchens. The label for Peaches Niagara bears an image of Anita Vespa Di Camillo and a map of Upstate New York.
“The peaches we are packaging are grown in one of the great fruit producing regions of America and the way we are processing the peaches is significantly different, making for a combination that is producing extraordinary results,” Di Camillo says.
The first for-sale run of five hundred 24-ounce jars sold out within a month and the peaches since have received “an exceptional reception” in Manhattan at Whole Foods and at other retail sites around the country. The peaches are sold as part of the
Di Camillo product line offered by specialty stores and high-end retailers in most of the larger metropolitan markets across the U.S., including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.
The reception by retailers and by consumers has been such that Bittner says,” I believe we have the potential to sell one million pounds of fruit in this manner.”
Dr. Olga Padilla-Zakour, a NYAIC value-added processing consultant and director of the New York State Food Venture Center at Geneva, says, “The Bittner-Di Camillo fancy peaches project is one example of how farmers are taking advantage of the food processing expertise available through the NY Ag Innovation Center to develop products and production techniques, and enhance recipes.”
Bittner and Di Camillo both say the NY Ag Innovation Center’s help was vital to making the new enterprise possible.
“The NY Ag Innovation Center consultants have been great. They have really made something happen for us that would not have been possible without them,” says Di Camillo, whose long-term goal is to export the peaches to Europe.
Bittner says fancy-packed cherries will be the next product for this new enterprise.
The NY Ag Innovation Center (NYAIC) is an initiative of the New York Farm Viability Institute whose mission is to grow New York’s agricultural sector and increase sales of NY farm products. NYAIC is supported by a USDA Rural Business-Cooperative Service grant, with additional support from NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets, the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Cornell Cooperative Extension.
For more information, contact the NY Ag Innovation Center, 150 Warren Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, 607-255-7215, nyaic@cornell.edu