Harold McClarty

The HMC Marketing Group
Kingsburg, California

Words to live by

"You have to like what you do and be proud of what you are producing. That is as much a part of it as making a living."

The Harold McClarty Story

“I grew up on a 40-acre farm in Parlier as the fourth generation from this area. I graduated from Selma High School and went on to UC Santa Cruz. At that time I wasn’t really enthused about agriculture. I saw it was a hard life, working seven days a week. It was a struggle. We didn’t starve but it wasn’t easy for my Dad to make a living and raise four kids. He had to drive a forklift in the off season.”

In the late 1960s when Harold McClarty headed for Santa Cruz, it was a very new UC campus with a penchant toward experimental education. “Like most people I created my own major – environmental geography, with an eye toward getting into building and planning, and focusing on considering the environment around you when you were building. But that wasn’t what most people were thinking about when they were building.”

“It wasn’t until I went away that I missed agriculture. I realized I wasn’t a city boy. I looked at other careers and didn’t see a lot of substance in those occupations. I loved the independence of agriculture. It is more than a job, it is a way of life. There is something about being on a farm that I love. I spend a lot of time in the office, but the favorite part of my day is when I am out on the farm.”

Farm

The HMC Marketing Group

After returning from Santa Cruz, McClarty spent about a dozen years working for others in the row crop and citrus business before launching his own firm in the late 1980s with a couple of other growers. Today HMC is one of the larger stone fruit and grape shippers in the San Joaquin Valley. “One of the keys to our success is that almost everything we sell is our own. I think that is important. My acreage has grown from 40 acres to a couple of thousand over that time period.”

Blueprint for Success

Innovation is the company’s theme. “When we started we focused on being progressive and always being a little bit on the edge. We were the first to use returnable plastic containers in the field and the first to pack grapes in a four-pound bag. We are always trying to innovate. I think the opportunity lies in the product itself. California has the best tasting fruit and I believe this 50-mile radius where we grow our fruit produces the best fruit in California. It’s like wine, Texas has wine but if you want premium wine, you go to Napa. If you want premium fruit, you go to California.”

HMC has a number of innovative items especially in the foodservice arena including its Lunch Bunch grapes and its newest product – Grape Escape – a snack pack of de-stemmed grapes. “We want to replace M&M’s,” McClarty quipped.

Family Business

Harold married his wife Deborah, who hailed from a westside farm, in the 1980s, and they have raised two kids (pictured with Harold above) who are following in their parents’ footsteps. Jonathan graduated from UC San Diego and received a masters from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Chelsea also graduated from Cal Poly. Both sit across from Dad on the sales desk though he said the choice to enter the family business was their own, with no pressure from him.