It all started in a kitchen...

In 1978, Rich Collins was a senior in high school, preparing to go to UC Davis and pursue his dream of building a farming operation. He was working as a dishwasher at a California-French restaurant in Sacramento called La Salle. Restaurant owner Dick Vickers had grown up on a farm in Illinois, and he and Rich talked frequently about a career in farming. Dick saw little future in the generalized farming he had grown up with, and he and Rich came to concentrate on the idea of specialty farming, focusing on something new and unique.

One Monday night, Dick came into the restaurant to personally prepare a special banquet. On the menu was something Rich had never before seen served at La Salle – braised endive. As Rich was scrubbing pots, Dick held up a head of the pale, elegant vegetable and proclaimed to Rich, "This is what you ought to grow! I paid $4 a pound for this stuff!"

The very next day, Rich acquired a package of chicory seeds, and planted them next to the conventional array of corn, string beans, and tomatoes in the market garden he and his brother were cultivating. The first harvest that fall consisted of about twenty chicory roots, which Rich then "forced" in sand-filled lard cans in the darkest confines of his bedroom closet. The roots yielded only pathetic-looking wild shoots, probably a lot like those first encountered in Belgium in 1830. Rich enjoyed them in a very bitter, yet deeply satisfying, salad.

For the next three years, Rich experimented with endive. While his fascination with the stuff was growing exponentially, improvement in the quality of his crops was progressing at a crawl. Since little practical information about endive production was available in the U.S., Rich decided to put his studies at UC Davis on hold and go to the source. On his twenty-second birthday, in January of 1982, Rich left for an extended visit to Western Europe, where endive was a dietary staple and expertise abounded.

The European connection

Rich spent nine months in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, and Spain. He visited universities, seed companies, and equipment manufacturers. Most importantly, he worked extensively with established endive growers. A Belgian researcher referred him to a producer in Spain, noting the similarities in the climates and growing conditions of Spain and California. After a bit of exploration, Rich located and met Jose Miguel Arias Lopez, Director of PLANASA, a Spanish endive growing company. They talked about endive production, and Jose gave Rich a tour of his large, modern facility and fields. It was a fortuitous meeting – Rich didn't know it at the time, but PLANASA was partly owned by the French-based Darbonne Company, now the Darome Group, which was to become a collaborator and eventually, a partner.

In November of 1982, Rich returned to Davis to finish his degree. He graduated eager to apply his recently acquired working knowledge of successful endive production. In the spring of 1983, Rich launched Rebel Farms, planting five acres of chicory seeds near Vacaville, CA, under the tutelage of long time area grower and UC Davis graduate Ton Lum. The first endive harvest took place, appropriately enough, on Thanksgiving Day of 1983.

It was tough going, with the first few years yielding far more hard work and disappointment than endive, let alone profit! Start-up costs were high, access to capital was woefully limited, and the learning curve for the young company seemed formidably long and steep. Meanwhile, European growers were producing 60,000 acres of endive and shipping only the highest quality product to the U.S. Potential buyers approached the idea of domestic endive with skepticism and a pre-conceived bias towards the European imports, and early marketing efforts bore little fruit.

The harvest from the 1984 season, still from only 5 acres, yielded the grand sum of a mere $3000 in total revenues. That March, Rich married his wife Shelly, and the couple served up a significant portion of the year's production in an endive salad for the nearly 400 wedding guests.

The return of the European connection

That same spring, Rich received an unexpected phone call from Jose Miguel Arias Lopez of PLANASA. Rich, who had been corresponding with Jose since his return from Europe in 1982, now knew that PLANASA was a part of the Darbonne Company, and he knew of Marc Darbonne, the patriarch and respected agricultural entrepreneur. It just so happened that Jose and Marc were "in the neighborhood" of the fledgling endive farm, and wondered if they could "drop in" for a visit.

Rich happily obliged, eager to learn anything he could from these European master growers. A bit sheepishly, Rich toured them through his recently sown, and rather weed-infested, five-acre field. Rich couldn't imagine that the two had been impressed by what they saw, but apparently, a seed was planted at that meeting that wasn't chicory!

A year later, in early 1985, Rich and Shelly celebrated their first wedding anniversary with a low-budget two-week trip to Europe. While there, Rich was invited to meet with Jose and Marc again, this time at the headquarters of the Darbonne Company in Milly-la-Foret, about 45 miles south of Paris. The two proposed a collaborative project among the three companies, with the goal of transferring endive production know-how from both France and Spain to California. Rich was elated, and enthusiastically accepted their offer. They agreed to start the project that spring.

1985 and 1986 were characterized by an intensely challenging collaboration between Rich, doing business as Rebel Farms of California, and the S.C. Darbonne Company. Marc Darbonne worked side by side with Rich in the five-acre field in Vacaville, tenaciously adapting European production techniques to the California farm and forcing room. Progress was slow, as any shortcoming or mistake identified one year generally meant waiting a full twelve months before attempting solutions.

The turning point

Buoyed by some very encouraging results in production in 1986, Rich and his collaborators decided in 1987 to incorporate as California Vegetable Specialties, and to increase production nearly 500%, from five to twenty-four acres. During the next three years, CVS and the Darbonne Company focused on painstakingly fine-tuning the CVS production process, so that buyers could consistently rely on California Vegetable Specialties for high quality endive. Acreage and production were static, profits were non-existent, and despite all of the hard work, quality wavered. Rich struggled with nagging doubts and a slipping morale.

Marc Darbonne provided the steadying influence and ongoing support that Rich needed to go forward. His commitment and focus, along with his ability to explore options and offer advice, were invaluable. Marc had a multitude of international experience with difficult crops, and could offer Rich a uniquely long-term, broad-based perspective. In 1989, Rich came perilously close to ceasing operations. He discussed his dilemma with Marc on a flight from Spain to France, and Marc advised him to quit only if he was convinced that they had done their best with no hope for betterment. When the issue was framed that way, Rich realized that he absolutely would not quit. Success was the only option, and the best was yet to come.

With renewed focus and effort, CVS produced successful crops in the early 1990's and began to better establish itself in the marketplace. As the market for California endive grew, the need for more capacity became apparent. This lead to the construction in 1995 of a new 30,000 square foot production facility in Rio Vista, CA. The project was designed and built on a fast track – 4 months of planning and 5 months of construction -- and the first crop at the new facility went in on September 28, 1995.

Initially, the Rio Vista facility ran at only 60% of its design capacity. Today, due to innovation and changes designed to increase production while maintaining quality, the plant is running at 110% of design capacity. By the end of the 90's, CVS had developed new products such as Endigia and organic endives. Recently, CVS has added the technology to create new packaging options for the retail and foodservice markets.