Mike Way, Co-owner, Prime Time International, Coachella, Calif. Director since 2022 | Member since 1987 Way Forges Own Path to Produce By Tim Linden Like many of his colleagues on the Western Growers Board of Directors, Mike Way grew up in Salinas, graduated from Salinas High School and went to college to major in ag business.
But he was not born with agriculture in his blood. “I was born and raised in downtown Salinas,” he recalls. “My dad was City Attorney of Salinas, and my mom was a homemaker.” Neither were born in Salinas as they moved there in 1965 specifically for his father to take that position. Three years later, Mike was born and, unfortunately, three years after that his father died. “I was raised by a single mom with the help of a lot of good friends,” Way said. The agricultural community and lifestyle did appeal to the Salinas native and when he graduated from high school in 1983, he matriculated to California State University at Fresno to get ready for an ag career. Soon after graduation, Way was hired by Sun World in December of 1988; it is one of only two jobs he has held in his career. “From Fresno, I moved to Riverside with Sun World and stayed there for two and a half years before they moved me to the desert in 1991,” he remembers. About a year later, Chuck Hodges, Mark Nickerson and Carl Sam Maggio put together the group that eventually called itself Prime Time International. Way joined that team as a salesman. “We initially had a different company name (C.H. Sales),” he said, noting that the Prime Time moniker was hatched a few years later as the leadership determined it would hang its hat on peppers. “Initially we shipped an assortment of vegetables from the desert,” he said. “The plan was to be in the vegetable business for seven to eight months of the year and take four months off. That idea lasted about two weeks.” Instead, the partnership began expanding its footprint and soon focused on green and colored peppers with deals in Mexico as well as California. Today and for the past 28 years, peppers have been Prime Time’s signature crop. “We have peppers every day of the year,” Way said. “We grow peppers in the desert, Oxnard and Bakersfield in California and we have 13 locations in Mexico. We are the largest pepper shipper in North America.” About five years ago, the shipper started an asparagus program that has grown to be about a
quarter of the company’s total volume and also features year-round production sourcing from Mexico and Peru. But peppers still make up the lion’s share of business with about 60 percent of sales. Prime Time also has seasonal production of sweet corn, tomatoes and green beans. In the 2000s, Way and Jeff Taylor became minority partners of the operation and in 2017, they became the managing partners. Just recently, the two partners completed the ownership shift and became co-owners with a majority stake in Prime Time. Though Way said the co-owners do have a couple of oars in the water concerning new projects, their main emphasis is on keeping their core business going and profitable. “California agriculture is currently swimming upstream,” Way said. “The increasing cost of everything is making it very difficult to produce a profit. We have to figure out how to get freight rates back down so we can survive.”
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MAY | JUNE 2022
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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