Spotlight On: North Shore

It is tough to argue with North Shore officials when they say their herbs are the freshest possible produce items at supermarkets. After all, the Thermal, Calif.-based company’s products are delivered direct from its greenhouses to market with their roots still attached, meaning that they are still living while on retail shelves and even in consumers’ refrigerators.

“We have a very unique product assortment,” says Greg Mooney, North Shore’s director of sales. “We offer a living product to consumers and that means it is the freshest product around. It also means a longer shelf life and reduced shrink for our retail partners.”

The company offers more than 20 different types of living culinary herbs in both packaged clamshell and potted varieties under its North Shore Living Herbs brand. The company has an organic line of herbs, also available in packaged or potted varieties, as well as a microgreen line that it is testing. The herbs are grown at North Shore’s more than 10 acres of greenhouse space where it grows its quality products hydroponically, allowing for a consistent supply year-round.

“Now our job is to show consumers that there are many things they can do with herbs to enhance their experience,” Mooney notes. “We are very excited to partner with retailers to educate the consumer through recipe tags, POS materials, and cross-promotions. We have a comprehensive marketing program, including digital, web, social media and partnership promotions.  Recently we won best-in-class label on our partnership with Yerecic Label on our Mint Mojito recipe tag focused on summer entertaining at home. Our job is to help the consumer use these products to trade up to fresh on the culinary experience.”

North Shore also offers a full skew of merchandising options, including acrylic trays great for getting basil out of refrigeration and onto the tomato table, and waterfall racks for easy execution on merchandising living potted herbs in the produce section where no refrigeration is required. 

The company also uses its two consumer brand websites—livingherbs.com and organicliving.farm—to offer consumers a bevy of different information and recipes using fresh living herbs, including entrées, soups, appetizers, drinks and desserts. “Fresh living herbs are the easiest way to enhance any culinary creation. The more variety of ways consumers use the products, the greater we are able to expand to category for a win/win with the retailer,” Mooney adds.

The company has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1987. That year, Leo and Suzette Overgaag began growing hothouse cucumbers but noticed that cut herbs wilted within just a few days at their local grocery store. Eventually, North Shore would develop a full line of packaged living herbs to be sold in the refrigerated section of the produce department. With 30 years of experience, North Shore has created the ideal environment to grow culinary herbs with detail to tenderness, flavor, aroma and an enhanced shelf life.

Mooney notes that North Shore is the first culinary herb grower in the U.S. to be approved as Sustainable Grown Certified by a recognized third-party certifier. He adds that the company utilizes renewable resources, such as solar power energy, to help power production and geothermal energy to heat the greenhouses on cool nights. Its hydroponic growing method enables the company to use up to 70 percent less water than field-grown crops.

“We are quite proud of the products we grow, the people behind them and how we produce it,” he says. “It is the way we do things at North Shore that sets us apart.