Century-Old California Table Olive Canner Faces Permanent Closure

The New York Times reports that extreme weather events and finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties have put the future of one of the United States’s old­est table olive pro­duc­ers in doubt.

Brothers Clifford and Charles Graber founded Graber Olive House after buy­ing land and plant­ing olive trees in Ontario, California, 60 kilo­me­ters east of down­town Los Angeles, in 1892.

The broth­ers com­pleted their first har­vest two years later and began can­ning tree-ripened olives in 1910.

During the 20^th cen­tury, the com­pany steadily expanded dis­tri­b­u­tion from south­ern California to the rest of the U.S. and other for­eign mar­kets.

In 2020, Ontario unan­i­mously named the orig­i­nal house where the com­pany was founded as a his­tor­i­cal land­mark.

Award-win­ning actress Lucille Ball and the host of the epony­mous Late Night with Jimmy Fallon are known fans.

“My wife loves these olives,” Fallon told mil­lions of view­ers in a May 2020 seg­ment while he dis­played a gift box of Graber Olives given to his wife, film pro­ducer Nany Juvonen Fallon, by his father.

Champion golfer Tom Watson even cited Graber Olives as one of the high­lights of the Masters at Augusta National, which he won in 1977 and 1981.

“The food is always good, espe­cially the corn­breads and the Graber olives,” he told Golf Magazine in a 2021 inter­view. ​“You can buy them in the can. They’re great.”

Until 2023, the com­pany har­vested up to 50 to 60 U.S. tons (45 to 54 met­ric tons) of olives annu­ally, enough for more than 100,000 cans.

However, Graber Olive House pro­duced less than half of this amount in 2022, the last year the com­pany canned olives.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 2022 was the sec­ond-low­est har­vest since 2010, with the Golden State pro­duc­ing just 19,900 U.S. tons (18,050 met­ric tons) of table olives.

Table olive pro­duc­tion has declined in California over the past 15 years. Between 2010 and 2014, the Golden State pro­duced 82,700 U.S. tons (75,000 met­ric tons) of table olives annu­ally. Production declined to 68,520 U.S. tons (62,160 met­ric tons) from 2015 to 2019, falling even fur­ther to 33,490 U.S. tons (30,381 met­ric) from 2020 to 2024.

USDA offi­cials and olive farm­ers point to the pro­found impacts of California’s drought from the late 2010s to early 2020s, extreme spring weather events, increased pro­duc­tion costs and chal­lenges find­ing enough work­ers as the main rea­sons for declin­ing table olive pro­duc­tion.

Current owner Maura Graber told The New York Times that California’s drought sig­nif­i­cantly affected the company’s decline.

“We had to buy extra water,” she said. ​“We had to pay three times as much on the ranch to keep things alive. We just had to make tough choices.”

One of these dif­fi­cult deci­sions was sell­ing the drought-stricken orchards to long­time man­ager Jay Zike. While Zike said he con­tin­ues to grow the olives the way the fam­ily has for over a cen­tury, he now sells to other clients.

Fierce infight­ing fur­ther impacted the fam­ily, result­ing in an expen­sive law­suit and set­tle­ment shortly before the start of the Covid-19 pan­demic.

The com­bi­na­tion of the legal costs and the failed har­vest in 2023 caused the company’s cans to dis­ap­pear from super­mar­kets and its own stores. The Grabers had already stopped sell­ing olives to bro­kers who dis­trib­uted them inter­na­tion­ally after poor har­vests in 2021 and 2022.

“We barely had enough to make it through [2021 and 2022],” Graber said. ​“We were hav­ing a real hard time keep­ing up. This was some­thing we knew was a slip­pery slope.”

Now, she fears the end might come when a $1.55 (€1.51) mil­lion emer­gency loan, on top of the thou­sands of dol­lars owed in past-due bills and expired licenses, comes due in March.

In a last-ditch effort to save the brand, the Grabers are sell­ing the can­nery for $3 (€2.9) mil­lion. They hope to pay off the debt and use some of the remain­ing money to lease the prop­erty and keep pro­duc­ing.

“People all over the world have enjoyed Graber olives,” co-owner Cliff Graber told The New York Times. ​“Right now, we are ready to get going. We’re look­ing for­ward to the next olive sea­son, and we’re ready to rock.”

• The New York Times
• Redlands Daily Facts