Joe Colace

Five Crowns Marketing
Crown Citrus
Brawley, California

Words to live by

“I want to passionately live out each day to its fullest … to accept each days challenges with peace and God’s strength and to gratefully recognize all that I have been given.”

Farm

Five Crowns Marketing & Crown Citrus

Hailing form The City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pa., the Colace family has farmed in the Imperial Valley and Arizona for three generations. Five Crowns Marketing, which is celebrating its 23rd year in 2008, is a branch of the family business which was established in 1951. The company began as a melon and lettuce shipper and later expanded into a year-round asparagus shipper. The firm also grows, packs and ships romaine, cauliflower, white, yellow and bi-color sweet corn, cantaloupes, honeydews, variety melons and now citrus.

Perseverence

The family business came under fire in 1979 when Colace Brothers, the company started by Joe’s father and uncle, was struck. In 1979, the UFW called a strike in support of a demand for a 40 percent increase in the general laborer farm wage. Most of the large vegetable farmers eventually agreed to raise wages in fall of 1979, but some, like Colace Brothers, went out of business. Joe did not allow those difficult times to hold him down as his family moved to Arizona and worked with Martori Farms. By 1985 the Colace family had returned to the Imperial Valley and had begun Five Crowns Marketing. “We have built our company on strong personal relationships with buyers, employees, coworkers,” Colace says as he reflects on how far the family business has come.

The New Citrus Packing House

The new citrus packing house, which was completed late last year, has the capacity to run more than four million packages. “There’s been no citrus processing facility in the Valley for decades, so we saw an opportunity,” Colace said. With the ownership group owning more than 5,000 acres of citrus within a 60-mile radius, Colace and his partners wanted to also, “provide the grower base located in this area with a state of the art facility to handle their fruit,” he added. With Crown Citrus’ new packinghouse in operation, a new era is ushered in to the Imperial Valley. Though Colace and his partners are thrilled with their progress thus far, there is still a lot to accomplish. Nevertheless, Colace says their goals for the company remain simple, “to be recognized within the citrus industry as a quality producer and shipper, to satisfy buyers’ requirements and to remit to the grower base the best terms possible.