Step aside bananas, apples, oranges. Thanks to a woman now age 94, we enjoy dozens of fruits and veggies that might as well have been on another planet.
You heard right. Frieda Rapoport Caplan — “Rappy” to her friends — founded and heads up a little known national company that brings us fruit so far out of this world that it’s appeared on “Star Trek.”
In the company’s supercooled warehouse in Los Alamitos, I bite into something called a cape gooseberry.
It should be called “party in your mouth.”
This Peruvian fruit is both tangy and sweet with tiny seeds that crunch. It even supplies its own burst of juice. And, yes, this slice of nature is good for your health.
Caplan is also known for introducing the ever-yummy kiwi fruit to America nearly a half-century ago.
But don’t think of this powerhouse of a woman as a fruit freak.
With a $50 million-plus business that has 75 full-time and 110 part-time employees and an international reach with more than 400 different healthy products, Caplan remains as grounded as finger lime.
What? You don’t know finger lime? Get ready for a taste that deserves it’s nickname: citrus caviar.
The fruit filled with beads that look like, well, caviar, grows on a thorny shrub in the subtropical lowlands of New South Wales in Australia.
Yes, Caplan quite literally has gone to the ends of the earth to satisfy customers. But that’s not the coolest thing about this woman who earned her bachelor’s degree at UCLA and an honorary doctorate from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
The coolest thing is that after more than 50 years, the business remains family run.
Daughter Karen Caplan, is president and CEO. Daughter Jackie Caplan Wiggins is vice president and granddaughter Alex Berkley is an assistant sales manager.
Nepotism? Hardly.
When you get to know “Rappy,” you’ll understand.
Low-hanging fruit
Walking Frieda’s Inc.’s 81,000-square-foot warehouse with Karen Caplan, we pass a crate that looks like it’s filled with Easter eggs painted light green with splashes of purple. What are these things?
The CEO laughs and explains the oval objects are pepino melons from Ecuador. Later, my tastebuds discover a mix of cucumber and honeydew. Better, “Women’s Fitness” dubs it a “superfruit” for its beta-carotene antioxidants.
Back in the 1950s when Caplan got into the fruit and vegetable business, things were different. A lot different.
There were no kiwis, pipino melons or cape gooseberries in grocery stores.
There also weren’t any women running produce businesses.
Still, Caplan knew she needed a part-time job and wound up as a secretary-clerk-sales-keeper at the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market. After several years, she saw that most handlers focused on what was popular.
But Caplan saw an opportunity to grow business in fringe foods — like farm fresh mushrooms, items that now flourish in food stores.
“I didn’t know anything about running a business,” Caplan confesses, “and I had no money.”
But — quoting what became and remains her motto — Caplan says, “Success came because I never saw obstacles.”
With baby Karen in the car, Caplan drove to Huntington Beach where she knew there was a massive surplus of mushrooms. The farmers allowed Caplan to take their mushrooms and pay them back after she sold the produce.
Caplan hauled boxes to Safeway stores and quickly sold out.
In her office at Frieda’s Inc. — where Caplan still works several days a week — the founder smiles at the memories. “I was known as the mushroom queen.”
She also earned a reputation for being fair, nice, open-minded — and a hard worker.
Getting up at 1 a.m. to arrive at work at 3 a.m. paid off.
Soon, Caplan was handling such “weird” produce as alfalfa sprouts, papayas, artichokes. “I sold the first palette of Hass avocados.”
Characteristically, Caplan is modest about her role in offering people new produce. “I was fortunate there was a swell in interesting produce.”
Yet others agree it was Caplan who introduced a wider America to such niche produce as spaghetti squash, jackfruit, green cauliflower, purple sweet potatoes.
In the mid-1970s, Caplan even had her own 90-second show on KABC news television in Los Angeles and was widely recognized as the “Green Grocer.”
“Mom’s brilliance,” says Karen who worked her way up from the mailroom, “is that she showed produce using media.”
Fruitful journey
As I stroll through the warehouse — white protective hair net and blue gloves in place, thank you very much — Karen and I pass a box of colorful dragon fruit.
Given the popularity of dragon fruit in our diverse 21st century, it may be difficult to believe there was a time when such a fruit was considered exotic.
But exotic it was.
Today, you may not even know you are eating dragon fruit. It has leathery red and green skin. But it’s the white flesh with tiny black seeds that is the sizzle. Some consider the taste something like — what else? — kiwi.
We pass a stack of boxes containing fresh cuke, also known as horned melon. Karen offers the orange fruit was eaten as an alien edible on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
What Karen doesn’t mention is that she was the first woman president of the United Fresh Produce Association and was the association’s 2015 honoree.
To be sure, the CEO earned the honor. Still, it was her mother before her who cleared the path for Karen and hundreds of other women.
In 1979, Mom became the first woman to earn The Packer’s “Produce Man of the Year” award. But Caplan declined the honor.
Soon, the award was renamed, “Produce Marketer of the Year,” and Caplan happily accepted.
Women from around the nation continue to seek Caplan’s advice. “I love to help people,” says the founder, “and to promote people.”
In the produce industry, Karen calls Mom “an urban legend.”
The moniker — sorry, I couldn ‘t resist — bears fruit.
