WEST PALM BEACH — Cushman Fruit Co., a 63-year-old Palm Beach County fruit shipper best known for its trademarked honeybells, has been bought by trendy gift-food retailer Harry & David.
"We think it is a great addition to our brand," said Bill Ihle, a spokesman for Medford, Ore.-based Harry & David Holdings Inc. "They have a tremendous reputation with their customers."
Ihle said it is too early to say whether any changes will be made to the Cushman business, which includes retail stores in West Palm Beach and North Palm Beach, as well as a packinghouse in Fort Pierce.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The late Ed Cushman founded the West Palm Beach-based gift fruit company that bears his name in 1945 with a small fruit store. The business has since become famous for the honeybell, which looks like a bell-shaped orange but it actually a type of tangelo made from a cross between a Duncan grapefruit and a Dancy tangerine.
Customers look forward to honeybell season, which is typically the first six weeks of the year, President Allen Cushman, Ed's son, said in 2003
In its early years, the company sold gift boxes of fruit to tourists who took it home or had it shipped to friends and relatives up North.
"For 25 years, we enjoyed enormous tourist business," Cushman said then. "What happened to change all that? Mickey Mouse. Families went to Orlando and our business dropped off."
Cushman Fruit shifted its emphasis to mail-order and Internet sales, which now make up 80 percent of its operations.
"The entire Cushman's team and I look forward to working with everyone at Harry & David to significantly expand Cushman's strong direct marketing, Internet and wholesale businesses," Cushman said Monday.
"It's consolidation, that's all it is, pure and simple," said Doug Bournique, executive vice president of the Indian River Citrus League. "That is the primary thing we are seeing throughout our industry."
Bournique estimated Florida's citrus gift fruit industry ships 2.5 to 3 million 40-pound cartons of grapefruit, honeybells, oranges and tangerines each year.
Mark DuBois of Callery-Judge Grove in Loxahatchee, said Cushman's has been a major player in the gift fruit industry.
"We were a big supplier of honeybells to them. We are scrambling around to see how this will affect us," said DuBois, who estimated Callery-Judge provided Cushman's with 18,000 to 20,000 cartons of honeybells last season.
Cushman Fruit had approximately $19 million in sales in fiscal 2007, according to Harry & David.
Harry & David traces its origins to 1914, when Harry and David Rosenberg took over the family business, according to the company's corporate Web site.
The brothers began pitching their Royal Riveria pears to businesses in 1934, and four years later, created the Fruit-of-the-Month Club.
The company has shops in Boca Raton's Town Center and the Gardens mall in Palm Beach Gardens.
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