This sweet little tomato has taken the produce world by storm, much to the delight of its Canadian suppliers.
Samantha Grice (National Post - July 13, 2004)
Paul Mastronardi isn't a regular viewer of The Sopranos, so it was a little bit of serendipity that he and his wife happened to be watching the show when his family's Sunset campari tomatoes showed up as a background prop. "I was totally shocked," says Mastronardi, a fourth-generation employee at Mastronardi Produce in Kingsville, Ont. "The scene probably lasted a minute. I said to my wife, 'This is definitely going to spark something.' " The next day, the phones at the Mastronardi Produce office were ringing off the hook. "They were saying, 'Hey, we saw your product on TV!' " he recalls. That was two years ago, and it's hard to say how much the subtle endorsement from HBO's favourite crime family contributed to the campari tomato's success. There's no doubt about the result, however: In Mastronardi Produce's 50-year history, they'd never seen a product take off like this little tomato. The campari is bigger than a cherry tomato, smaller and rounder than a plum tomato and is the deepest, robust shade of red. It is sweet and juicy (never mealy), has superb sugar and acid levels and has won awards in Europe. It's an on-the-vine variety and is greenhouse-grown by only three suppliers in North America, two of which are in Canada. And it also has a sexy name. Mastronardi started growing it about six years ago, after a customer requested a tomato that tastes and looks as though it was harvested from a backyard garden. "They said, 'Throw out all the rules that say big, big, big and let's focus only on flavour and see what that tomato looks like.' " For a couple of years, Mastronardi experimented with about 60 different varieties of seeds (none of which were genetically modified), taste-testing them with employees and their customers until they came upon the European campari seed. Last year, the campari hit its stride in midwestern U.S. and the eastern seaboard. And last winter the hype picked up pace in eastern Canada. Presently, the tomato is enjoying a heady moment in the spotlight. Mastronardi, who distributes through the eastern U.S. and Canada, is growing three times more campari tomatoes than he was at this time last year. On the weekend, Loblaws had staff giving out samples of the campari in stores and Dominion introduced the tomato to its customers through a free English cucumber-with-purchase promotion. "That makes for a natural salad," says Chris Lang, the senior category manager at A&P and Dominion and the man who approached Mastronardi to create the fruit in the first place. "We're enjoying tremendous sales growth with the campari," says Lang. "We're raising the bar every week with it. The flavour profile is unique and consumers are obviously enjoying it. People who buy it come back and buy it again." Loblaws is also enjoying its place in the campari success story. "It's certainly taking off," says Jeff Wilson, a Loblaws spokesperson. "Sales are increasing at a tremendous rate and have more than doubled in the last few weeks." But Ontario is actually a little slow on the campari uptake. Western Canada caught on to the campari tomato six years ago when it was sold at Costco stores. That region's producer, B.C. Hothouse, says a second spike in demand occurred last year when they began distributing through mainstream grocery stores. They too are now enjoying a campari moment and have almost doubled their number of plants from the same time last year. "It's the most talked about product we market, and we have 15 varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers," says Kirk Homenick, the company's marketing manager. "It's grown to almost a cult-like status. It's no longer a tomato, it's a campari." Mastronardi also says the inquiries about the campari surpass all others both in volume and outright passion. Of the couple of thousand e-mails he's saved over the last few years, the topics range from claims of campari addiction (one consumer compared the tomato to crack cocaine), to enthusastic overeating, to urgent inquiries as to where they can find them and anxiety when their store has run out. "And one person says it cured her cancer," says Mastronardi. "The campari started off as a niche item, but now it's in the mainstream. There are lots of niche items but they don't become mainstream, like the kumquat," says Mastronardi. "Everyone knows the kumquat but no one buys it. People know this tomato by name. With other produce they refer to it as a pineapple, a pepper, but people know this by name. The campari is probably one of the first vegetables to be water cooler talk around the office."
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