Costco Connection - December 2011

supplier profile

At right, company founder
Stephen G. Martinelli.
At left, July 4, 1935, parade entry.

supplier profile A toast to tradition

Company name:

S. Martinelli & Company

Several years later, in Watsonville, still the home of the company, he was making soda water in a lean-to on the barn, and soon added ginger ale and a patented orange champagne.

Year founded: 1868

Founder:

Stephen G. Martinelli

President: John Martinelli

By Claire Sykes

Employees: 250

FROM THANKSGIVING to New Year’s, glasses brim with S. Martinelli & Company’s sparkling apple cider. Sweet yet tart, its fresh-picked flavor is reason enough to celebrate. You can also raise a toast to the 143-year- old company’s time-honored juice-making tradition.

In 1868, when he established S. Martinelli & Company, Stephen introduced his bottle-fermented champagne cider, with apples from his brother’s acreage. Seventeen years later, he moved to a new production plant and launched a hard cider, followed by

Address: P.O. Box 1868

Watsonville, CA 95077-1868

soda (five flavors) and apple cider. His son

Website:

—John Martinelli doubling apple production andto generation, S. Martinelli to generation, S. Martinelli tegy that has placed our grocery stores. We’re for us, because it’s . —John Martinelli

h John Martinelli

joined the business in 1918 and helped

PHO TOS COUR TES Y: S. MAR TINELLI & COMPANY

www.martinellis.com

develop the pasteurization process to assure a shelf-stable product.

Contact at: 1-800-662-1868;

customer_service@ martinellis.com

For five generations, the
Then Prohibition hit. “That was
our first big challenge,” says John

Products at Costco:

Martinelli family has been picking
and pressing apples to make their
famous effervescent refreshment. “We
haven’t at all changed the way we make
apple juice,” John Martinelli, president
and the founder’s great-grandson, tells
Martinelli. “Having our top product
rendered illegal forced us to create the
sparkling cider category that we’re so
renowned for today.”

Sparkling Apple Cider (all locations);

Apple Juice ( 24 10-oz. bottles in some locations)

Comments about Costco:

The Connection.

It begins with U.S.-grown apples: Gala and Fuji, Red and Golden Delicious, Pink Lady, Honey Crisp and Granny Smith. But it’s the ugly, squatty Newtown Pippin that’s the company’s signature variety.

“Costco has become a significant customer of ours because of their everyday, low-priced marketing strategy that has placed our

“It has the best flavor for any apple juice on
earth,” says Martinelli. “We buy them all; we’ve got
that market locked up.”
Over the decades, the company faced
a variety of challenges but always man-
aged to survive. For example, when John
came on board in 1979, the company was buckling
under increasing customer demand. “We couldn’t
make enough product to keep it on grocery store
shelves,” he explains. In 1984, bank loans helped
rebuild their plant, doubling apple production and
tripling sparkling cider volume.

The apples hang on the tree until they’re completely ripe, then are picked and hauled to the company’s processing plant. There, staff wash and hand-sort the harvest, tossing out apples that don’t meet company standards. Huge machines grind and press the pulp, setting the juices free. The golden nectar is filtered at orchard temperature, not boiled and vacuumed to a concentrate like other apple juices. The only heat Martinelli’s apples feel is the sun’s, until the flash-pasteurization process. The steamy juice fills the bottles, which are immediately capped so the apple essence can’t escape, and then cooled.

Then China stormed the market, in the late ’90s, with concentrated apple juice at half the price of Martinelli’s. “It made it very difficult for us to compete in the family-sized category,” says Martinelli. But nobody could conquer Martinelli’s juices that sparkled or were poured from their iconic apple-shaped 10-ounce bottle—and Costco couldn’t resist them.

product competitively
with other brands in
grocery stores. We’re
forever grateful to
them for being there
for us, because it’s
kept our product at
an affordable price.”

From generation to generation, S. Martinelli
“This process gives you the highest-quality
product,” says Martinelli, who taste-tests each day’s
batches. “It may cost more, but it’s worth it.”

& Company is maintaining the tradition “of quality that people can count on,” Martinelli says. “What’s most important to us is continuing our family legacy, and our customers being a part of that with us.” C

It always has been. In 1859, a 15-year-old Swiss immigrant named Stephen G. Martinelli (the name Stephen Martinelli is another family tradition) joined his brother Louis on his farm in central California’s fertile, apple-growing Pajaro Valley.