Eighty Years of Tomatoes
By Michelle Fabio
I know you love tomatoes, but the DiMares *love* tomatoes.
For eight decades, the DiMare family has been in the tomato business, and they show no signs of slowing down now.
It all started with a pushcart in Boston and has grown to operations in Florida, Texas, and California, making the DiMare’s one of the largest tomato packers and growers in America.
The company started in 1927 with brothers Joseph (18), Anthony (16), and Dominic (15), first-generation Italian-Americans, selling tomatoes in Beantown’s Haymarket area. Soon thereafter, the brothers opened a store and borrowed $3,000 from the bank for a license to sell from a stall at the Quincy market.
Just a few years later, the company went national with their packing business, and by 1945 had started growing their own tomatoes in Florida.
Throughout the years, the DiMares have kept the business in the family, passing the successful tomato business from one generation to another–multiple members of each generation are involved in the family business, in fact.
The DiMares have been successful largely because they’ve been open to trying new ideas and traveling to find the best produce; they now also pack peppers, cucumbers and squash and have expanded their operations greatly across the country.
“Times changed, and we changed with them,” Paul DiMare said. “You have to be forward-thinking. You can’t stay with the old things. You have to do what it takes to stay alive, and they did that, thank God.”
Don’t you just love the tales of true family businesses in this day and age?
Source: DiMares mark eight decades of tomato packing
