The Citrus Box

Kindness + Gratitude = Blessings

3/22/2020

A gracious gift of organic chocolate from ChocolaTree Organic Eatery

As our local food service industries become more impacted by the COVID-19 virus, Patagonia Orchards owner, Philip Ostrom, helped to solve some distribution gaps by getting behind the wheel to personally deliver much needed citrus to Arizona’s local stores and restaurants that remain open. We’d like to thank the owners and employees of ChocolaTree Organic Eatery for their many kindnesses this week not only to Philip and our company but to the larger community they serve. Special thanks to owners Kelly Johnson and Radhika Jen Marie! 🙏🏽 Kindness + Gratitude = Blessings

At ChocolaTree, they hand-harvest cacao pods and peel each bean individually on their small cacao farms. The beans are then stone ground over days to maintain their raw, organic, fully nutritious, live state. It’s one of our favorite places to dine on the planet and we’re blessed to have been both customers and suppliers for many years.

~Sherry Luna

Sherry Luna is the a co-owner and founding member of Patagonia Orchards. When she is not working in her garden, making butternut squash enchiladas or paddle boarding with her family, she is VP of Branding.

0 Comments

food safety and the novel coronavirus (covid-19)

3/19/2020

0 Comments

To Our Valued Customers,

At Patagonia Orchards, serving you is the most important thing we do, and your health, safety and well-being remains our top priority. As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) begins to impact our community and daily lives, we want to assure you that we are monitoring developments very closely and taking action at our offices on a daily basis to protect and support our family of customers and employees.

Ensuring Food Safety and Hygiene Practices
While coronavirus is not spread through food, the industry must mitigate against the substantial risks associated with the close contact between possibly-infected warehouse workers and the end consumer.

We are being vigilant about ensuring our employees are following our standard safe practices for food safety and hygiene. We have also put in place virus mitigating actions to include limiting non-essential travel, social distancing, building workforce redundancies and cross-training employees. We have issued statements advocating for consistent hygiene (handwashing and minimal face touching) aimed at containing the spread of the virus.

Our offices have increased the routine cleaning of high-touch, hard surface areas such as counters, desks, door handles, keyboards and computers, etc., as well as increase cleaning sanitation of bathroom and kitchen areas.

Monitoring and Communicating with Employees
Employees have been instructed to take increased precautions to ensure they keep themselves and everyone around them healthy. This includes staying home from work if they are feeling ill and notifying us and staying home for 14 days if they have been in close contact with anyone being monitored for COVID-19. New company guidelines for sick time have been established to ensure employees are supported if quarantine is necessary for themselves or loved ones.

Monitoring and Communicating with our Customers
We take our responsibility to our customers very seriously and will continue to work diligently to maintain the level of service you expect from us. We ask for your patience should we experience increased hold time on in-bound calls. Shipping time may also be increased as our carriers and suppliers deal with this unprecedented situation.

Monitoring and Communicating with Border Agencies
We will be working closely with established management and state and local authorities to handle situations as they arise in our industry and will update our customers of any changes in our border crossing schedule.

We thank you for your business and please stay safe.

Philip Ostrom
President

0 Comments

Organic Produce Summit 2019!

7/1/2019

0 Comments

Teeth Chattering Cold Got you Down?

2/21/2019

0 Comments

Bite into a juicy piece of Summer Citrus! As the premier suppliers of organic citrus, Patagonia Orchards is your one stop source for the best certified organic Valencia oranges, limes, lemons and grapefruit from Arizona and Mexico! Chase winter away with a sweet blast of summer!

Patagonia Orchards has promotable volumes of Valencia Oranges from now through June.

Fun Facts:

Valencia oranges are the top selling citrus in the Spring and Summer in the U.S. and are the most commonly cultivated tree crop around the world
56% of produce customers purchased oranges in the past year and 27% of those shoppers say they bought ORGANIC oranges this past year!
Valencia oranges provide 116% of the RDA of Vitamin C and are loaded with 170 different phytochemicals, many of which have anti-inflammatory properties and antioxidant effects.
Valencias are known as the Summer Citrus
Valencia oranges are the top selling citrus in the Spring and Summer!