COVER STORY
John D’Arrigo Celebrating the Recipient of WG’s 2023 Award of Honor By Kara Timmins, Communications Manager C reating an individual legacy within the framework of a multi-generational operation takes effort, ingenuity and mastery. Managing to create something new while upholding the value of what has been done before can only be done with precision and intention.
John D’Arrigo learned at a young age that there are lessons in the work. As one of six kids growing up on a second- generation farm, John realized that while the necessities were always there, satiating wants came from work. Hard work. “Back when I grew up, everybody had to have a Schwinn 10-speed bicycle.” To get that Schwinn, John was given an objective that would be the foundation for everything. His father, Andy D’Arrigo, said to him, “Well, go earn it.” He did. And then someone stole it. Andy had another lesson at the ready. He said, “Let me teach you about insurance.” As the years progressed, John continued to work in the family business. “Every summer, my dad had me working on the farm,” John said. “I worked in packing, rode the bus to work, cut and loaded celery and bunched onions. I did all of those jobs. I guess he was trying to figure out what I was made of and to teach a strong work ethic and what these people go through should I choose this as a career…He was a
great teacher in all of those aspects, both my mother and my father, of just what it takes to make things work, make some money, work hard for it, feel good about it, see who you are as a person and can you stand it.” Even with his contribution to the business in his youth, John’s involvement in terms of a career in the organization wasn’t a given. When John set out to college, he didn’t go with an idea of creating a legacy in agriculture. He went to college to be a dentist. It was a dentist who steered John back to the family business. “He said to me, ‘Are you crazy? You’re going to be stuck with me in this little, tiny office for the rest of your life and you’ve got this massive farming acreage with career paths everywhere?’” By the time John graduated from UC Davis in 1980, he had come to fully appreciate how special his family’s business was. As he got off the commencement stage, his father said, “I’ll see you on Monday morning.” Monday morning started his master
class in business as he worked in every different department within the company. It took years of working in different specialties with different groups within the organization to learn how the decades-old company worked on a cellular level. In 1923, Andrea and Stefano D’Arrigo, two brothers from Messina, Sicily, founded D’Arrigo Brothers. Though the brothers started their operations in Boston, they expanded to the Salinas Valley in 1925. Andy Boy, with its now-iconic pink label, came two years later in 1927 to be the first branded fresh vegetable. The kind of adaptive thinking and innovative creativity that started with Andrea and Stefano continues today at D’Arrigo with John. After experiencing the company at every level, John’s goal became clearer. When discussing that time, John recalled thinking, “I am going to grow this company… I studied why third-generation companies fail all over the country. I studied this for a while. Why did they fail? What happens?
At D’Arrigo headquarters
The early D’Arrigo generations
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SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2023
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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