California Vegetable Specialties, Inc.

While now America’s largest grower of endive, the company started from very humble beginnings as the brainchild of founder Rich Collins. The seed for the idea was planted in 1978 while Rich worked as a dishwasher in a French restaurant in Sacramento, California. After a trip to Europe to learn hands-on about growing techniques, the company was born in 1983.

Endive requires a two-step growing process before it is ready to be enjoyed. The first growth takes about 150 days in the field, where the chicory grows from seed into a leafy green plant with a deep tap root. At harvest, tops of the leafy chicory plant are cut off, the roots dug up, and then placed in cold storage where they enter a dormancy period. As demand necessitates, roots are removed from cold storage for their second growth, which takes 28 days in dark, cool, humid forcing rooms, similar to a mushroom growing facility. This control over the initiation of the second growing process allows for the year-round production of endive.

Endive is a member of the chicory family, which includes radicchio, escarole, frisee, and curly endive. It has a crisp texture and a sweet, nutty flavor with a pleasantly mild bitterness — great served raw or cooked. The low calorie content and abundance of vitamins and minerals make California endive a nutritious and delicious choice for your diet. As the only major grower in America, they take great pride in their year-round production of the highest quality red and white endives, both conventional and organic.