Olive Pickle Company has paved the way for better pickles and pickle companies throughout the industry. In , Mt. Olive, which celebrated its 95th anniversary in , is the 1 pickle brand in the U.
Its facilities have grown from that first acre to acres in Mount Olive, with 1. The company has a tank yard with about 1, fiberglass tanks with storage capacity for over 40 million pounds of cucumbers.
Olive has a team of about 1, employees. Bryan, Executive Chairman. All About Mt. Making History Through Innovation Pickles have been around for about 4, years.
Olive Today Mt. No more Vlassics in my fridge, as a pickle lover I assure you they have the best product in stores! I love them, not just pickles all of their products are amazing!
Olive Pickle Company is Mt. Olive, North Carolina. Generations from the same families have and continue to work in the plant, which produces pickles, peppers and relishes in various flavors and configurations.
Olive Pickle. Celebrating its 90th anniversary in , Mt. The area had an abundance of surplus cucumbers, and their plan was to buy and brine them to sell to other packers. At one point, Williams said, there were a lot of smaller regional pickle companies. In the s, many were bought and absorbed into larger corporations.
Today, Mt. Olive is the largest privately held pickle company in the United States. Operating on acres, its facilities include about , square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space and a yard with 1, fiberglass tanks that can store more than 40 million pounds of cucumbers. It employs about people year round, adding another to during the summer, when production is ramped up as large volumes of cucumbers are harvested.
Olive took a number of steps to improve its business. In , it installed its first piece of computerized technology in its plant, which initiated an on-going effort to upgrade and automate the production process.
Eventually computers would become key players from the start of fermentation to the final packing and shipping. Olive would also look to save money by eliminating its ownership of a fleet of delivery trucks, opting instead for a full-service leasing program. Walker retired in , becoming president emeritus of the company. He was replaced by William H. Bryan, who started working at Mt. Olive in Raised in the community, Bryan went away to school at the University of Carolina, where he became Phi Beta Kappa and earned a degree in business, then went to work as an accountant in Raleigh, North Carolina.
In , he returned home to help with the family plywood business, decided to stay, and went to work for Mt. After Bryan finally took charge of the company, Mt.
Olive gained a toehold in that market as well. Moreover, it began to penetrate grocery chains in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. By , the company was packing million jars of pickled products each year.
To accommodate its rapid growth, in the company opened a new ,square-foot distribution center. In the late s, Mt. Olive was a thriving enterprise, having become the dominant pickle company in the South.
It was its name recognition, however, that would result in Mt. In the summer of , FLOC announced that it was beginning a campaign to improve wages as well as living and working conditions for the thousands of migrant workers that harvested North Carolina's cucumber crop.
Although Mt. Olive did not hire farm workers but rather contracted for cucumbers from growers, FLOC sought to pressure Mt. Olive into entering a three-way negotiation, in which the company would apply pressure on the growers to make concessions. It was a tactic that had proved successful for the union in the past. FLOC was established in by Baldemar Velasquez and other young Chicano activists in the northwestern counties of Ohio, where at the time tomatoes were the primary crop and cucumbers secondary.
FLOC first employed its strategy of engaging processors in labor contracts in when it targeted Campbell's Soup Company, which was a major buyer of local tomatoes. Drawing on support from church and community groups, FLOC organized a boycott of Campbell's products, as well as urging consumers and Campbell shareholders to write letters of protest to management.
A drawn-out struggle ensured, highlighted by a march to Campbell's Camden, New Jersey, headquarters. Finally in , after seven years of struggle, Campbell's took part in negotiations that led to a three-year contract with tomato growers and farm workers. Other contracts were later signed with Campbell's subsidiary Vlasic, as well as Heinz, Dean Foods, and others.
FLOC faced a different landscape in North Carolina, which was a right-to-work state traditionally hostile to unionizing activities. In addition, the migrant worker population was much larger than what FLOC worked with in Ohio, and instead of being families consisted mostly of single males, many of whom were in the country under a government work contract and more reluctant to speak out. Olive in June when he led a mile march to the steps of the state capital from the company's main gate.
Olive products in The company maintained that it was being singled out because of its name recognition, and that it had no place in negotiating a contract between growers and laborers, although it would abide by whatever deal the two sides struck.
FLOC argued that because Mt. Olive set the price with contractors even before the crop was planted, the company essentially dictated the wages that growers could offer, and was therefore very much a legitimate part of a labor negotiation.
The company was also the first to produce no-sugar-added sweet pickle products in , when it started using Splenda brand sweetener. Olive Company remains on the original property but now has , square feet of production, warehouse, and office space. Each year, the company uses over million pounds of cucumbers and peppers and packs approximately million jars a year of pickles, relishes, and peppers.
Olive pickles can be found in their distinct yellow and green jars in all fifty states and has become the largest privately held pickle company and the best selling pickle brand in the country.
Year round, the company maintains about employees and just over employees during the summer, when their intake season is at its peak. Olive, attend the annual Pickle Drop.
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