"It’s all about the tomato,” says Ross Taylor, a fifth-generation heir of the family tomato farming business, Seaside Farm. Based on Saint Helena Island in South Carolina, every year the family sells 20 million pounds of their tomatoes to restaurateurs and local grocers mostly along the East Coast.
“We pick them mature green. We can’t ship a ripe tomato,” said Mac Sanders, Ross’s uncle. “We inject atmospheric ethylene to ripen the tomato prior to the point of sale,” Mac said
But waste was always a problem; every year, about 2 million pounds of tomatoes were too ripe to ship, so they paid to have them thrown away.
Then during harvest a few years ago, Ross and some visiting college buddies seized on a passion to concoct the perfect Bloody Mary mix. One thing led to another, and soon Ross had an idea of how to put all that wasted fruit to good use.
