Eastside Marketplace | Almanac and Calendar

You Say ToMATEo, and I Say ToMATo

And Tillie Lewis Says “I’m the World’s Tomato Queen”

In 1916, fifteen year-old Brooklyn native Myrtle Ehrlich left high school after one year to marry a wholesale grocer and to go to work in his business. Noticing the high demand for the imported cans of firm-bodied, pear-shaped Italian tomatoes (pomodori) used by the best cooks to make the best spaghetti sauce, she had a plan. “Why not grow pomodori domestically?” She consulted with the agriculture specialists at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, who advised that pomodori could not be grown in American soil. Discouraged (and divorced) she moved on, studying business and briefly selling securities on Wall Street.

In 1934 the federal government raised the tariff on imported tomato products by 50%. Once again Myrtle decided to pursue the possibility of growing the pomodoro variety domestically. An upcoming vacation to Italy provided the perfect opportunity. There she met Florindo del Gaizo, an Italian exporter who was worried about losing his American customers. She procured pomodoro seed, and she talked del Gaizo into staking $50,000 on a project to grow them in California. Together they formed the Flotill Foods Corporation. They hired Stockton farmers to experiment. Needless to say, the experiment was a success — pomodoro tomato seeds grew beautifully in California! Myrtle’s next step was to talk the Pacific Can Company into building a plant at Stockton, with an option for her to buy it. On July 13, 1935, her 34th birthday, the first Flotill cannery in Stockton opened. By 1940, she had made San Joaquin County the top tomato-producing county in the United States. In 1951 Flotell Products, renamed Tillie Lewis Foods, Inc. was earning $30 million per year, making it one of the five largest canning companies in the United States. In the same year, Tillie Lewis (Myrtle’s adopted business name), was named “businesswoman of the year” by the Associated Press. That year pear-shaped tomatoes made up about 10% of California’s crop. By 1971, Tillie Lewis Foods had sales of over $90 million per year. During the Korean War, Flotill was the nation’s largest supplier of U.S. Army C-Rations.

EASTSIDE MARKETPLACE ALMANACK • August 2012

Toby Rossner, Feature Writer

You Say ToMATEo, and I Say ToMATo

And Tillie Lewis Says “I’m the World’s Tomato Queen”

August 2012 Calendar