Produce Veteran Launches New Organic Veg Operation Bluebird Mountain Organics

Darrell Beyer, who started selling organic produce about two decades ago, has launched his own company, Bluebird Mountain Organics, with a headquarters office in Nevada and year-round production coming mostly from Mexico and California’s Ventura County.

The company officially began shipping a few items from its cooler in early September once it achieved its organic certification. “We are going to be able to get off to a very good start [in mid-to-late September] with some organic green onions,” he said. “The green onion market is very hot, and we’re going to have good supplies.”

While rain in Mexico slowed down the start of the fall-winter deal, volume will start picking up later this month, and Beyer expects to have good supplies of many organic vegetables from both Mexicali and Baja California until late spring/early summer 2023. At that point, Bluebird Mountain Organics will increase its production from the Oxnard area, giving it year-round supplies.

The veteran organic veg salesman said his grower partner in Mexicali is the largest grower in that region, and he has grower deals in the other two growing regions for Bluebird: Baja and Oxnard.

While rain in Mexico slowed down the start of the fall-winter deal, volume will start picking up later this month, and he expects to have good supplies of many organic vegetables from both Mexicali and Baja California until late spring/early summer 2023.

“I’m going to be handling most of the same items I have handled for years,” Beyer said, rattling off a list that featured about a dozen organic items, including the aforementioned green onions as well as dates, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, parsley, cilantro, radishes, leeks, kale, and some other leaf items.

Darrell Beyer, Founding Partner, Bluebird Mountain Organics

Eventually, Bluebird Mountain Organics is planning to handle some fruit items as well as conventional vegetables, though its bread and butter will be the organic veggies that brought Beyer into the organic business.

Beyer started his career at Perricone Citrus on the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market in 1994, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Hank Beyer, and his father, Steven Beyer.

After the company was sold in late 1998, Beyer moved around a bit, operating as a produce broker for several years before spending time with two different operations specializing in organic produce: Pure Pak and Sundance Natural Foods.

It was at Pure Pak that he first started making a name for himself in the organic veg business, and he explained on “Todd-versations,” a produce industry-oriented podcast, that Pure Pak was one of the few shippers with organic berries. “Everyone wanted the berries,” he said, noting that it wasn’t difficult getting those buyers to also take some organic kale, broccoli, and daikon. That gave him a great start in the organic vegetable business.

Eventually, Bluebird Mountain Organics is planning to handle some fruit items as well as conventional vegetables, though its bread and butter will be the organic veggies that brought Beyer into the organic business.

As the 2010s dawned, Beyer and his dad launched their own brokerage house, City Ag LLC, which they ran for several years. Next stop for the younger Beyer was Boskovich Farms in Oxnard. As director of organic sales for a seven-year period starting in 2014, Beyer boasts that he helped grow organic sales from $5 million to $20 million annually. He left that company at the end of last year and has been working on his own deal ever since.

Bluebird Mountain Organics is a DBA of its parent firm, The Beyer Company. The company has launched “Naturally Grown Organics” as its organic vegetable label, and “The House of Dates” label is utilized for its date crop.

Though the demand for organic items has definitely increased in the past two decades, so has the number of players. Beyer said in some ways it was an easier game those many years ago as he explained earlier with the example of berries paving the way for other sales. Today, he notes a lot of people are jumping into the category due to the perceived higher prices for the end product without the understanding that growing organically is no easy undertaking.

Beyer is selling his slice of the cake from his office in the foothills between Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nevada. Though he will spend lots of time at his cooler in Oxnard and visiting the farming operations in the various growing regions, he appears to have found his perfect home environment in Nevada.