Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • December 2022
  • Case
  • HBS Case Collection

Taylor Farms: Adding Value to Fresh Produce

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Pedro Levindo
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:40
ShareBar

Abstract

In October 2022, Bruce Taylor (HBS MBA, 1981), Chairman and CEO of Taylor Farms, the leading producer of salads and healthy fresh foods in the United States, wondered whether this was the right time for Taylor Farms to venture into the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). Taylor Farms’ operations involved farming, processing, and distributing about 50 million pounds of fresh produce every week. To accomplish such a feat, Taylor Farms faced a number of ongoing challenges related to features such as food safety, climate change, labor shortages and wages, input prices, and logistics. CEA, either in high-tech, single-level greenhouses or vertical farms (multi-layer indoor crop cultivation systems), could not entirely help address environmental and logistic challenges, but its smaller geographic footprint enabled operations closer to consumption sites. Indoor farms were promoted as using far less water and requiring less transportation than traditional farms, but they required more power and were more expensive to build and run. With these solutions still under development, Bruce harbored some qualms about their actual benefits. After all, Taylor Farms had been able to sustain double-digit revenue growth rates by sticking to conventional agriculture. Yet, he did not want the company to fall behind in new technologies that could render its operations more efficient. Moreover, CEA producers might turn into a threat for Taylor Farms, eating into its market share by catering to consumers who favored “environmentally-friendlier” products. Was this the right time for Taylor Farms to venture into the CEA space, or should it wait for the technology to evolve further or the industry to consolidate?

Keywords

Technology Adoption; Cost vs Benefits; Logistics; Environmental Sustainability; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

Citation

Reinhardt, Forest L., Jose B. Alvarez, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago, and Pedro Levindo. "Taylor Farms: Adding Value to Fresh Produce." Harvard Business School Case 523-041, December 2022.
  • Educators

About The Authors

Forest L. Reinhardt

Business, Government and the International Economy
→More Publications

Jose B. Alvarez

Marketing
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • December 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Applegate Farms

    By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
    • December 2022 (Revised January 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    Marfrig's Quest for Greener Beef

    By: Jose B. Alvarez, Pedro Levindo and Ruth Costas
    • December 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Mission Produce in 2022

    By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
More from the Authors
  • Applegate Farms By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
  • Marfrig's Quest for Greener Beef By: Jose B. Alvarez, Pedro Levindo and Ruth Costas
  • Mission Produce in 2022 By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College