Norfolk Healthy Produce, the maker of a purple tomato engineered to be filled with nutrients, has been seeing strong sales in stores in the southeast.
The first genetically engineered produce developed to appeal to consumers for its nutritional value has been commercially available this spring in some stores on the East Coast.
“We are seeing reorders where the stores are ordering three cases per week per store,” said Nathan Pumplin, CEO of Davis-based startup Norfolk Healthy Produce.
Reorders are a good sign that consumers like the flavor, Pumplin said.
What the company is learning from its first commercial foray is whether “this a novelty that people will try once, or does this have legs? Is it something people will return to?” Pumplin said.
The tomato is available in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland in Food Lion and Lidl supermarkets. It's selling in select stores in a few states because it's working with a grower that has greenhouses in Virginia, and the grower already supplies those stores with other produce.
Pumplin said the company is looking for growers to work with on the West Coast.
Norfolk’s purple tomato is the size of a large cherry tomato and has all the antioxidants of blueberries along with the health benefits and nutrition of tomatoes.
The genetically modified fruit received Food and Drug Administration approval in 2022 and approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in June last year. Most companies that use bioengineering tend to focus on grain, corn and oil crops, because getting all the approvals is expensive so the only way to get the investment back is by volume on a commodity crop.
Norfolk Healthy earlier this year sold 13,000 seed packets online to backyard growers, which was a much stronger demand than it anticipated, Pumplin said.
In Davis, the company earlier this year was selling seedling tomato plants at the Davis Farmers Market, which was an opportunity for Pumplin to engage with consumers about the tomato and to answer people’s questions.
He said people are interested in the nutritional value and are not so much concerned about the plant-based bioengineering that went into developing it.
Norfolk Healthy is planning to raise money later this year from angel investors.
The purple tomato was developed by Cathie Martin, a professor of botany in England whose work is focused on diet and health. In 2007, she was researching anthocyanins pigment in snapdragons, and she found the gene that turned on the pigment. She then used that gene in tomatoes, which have anthocyanins in their skin, and she was able to propagate the nutrient through the fruit.
Anthocyanins create antioxidants and color in blueberries, raspberries, eggplant and other food crops that are dark red, blue or purple
The company, which has a handful of full-time employees as well as some consultants, conducts yield trials in greenhouses north of Davis. It’s not set up as a commercial operation, but it does allow the company to have limited local produce.
The first attempt ever to use genetic modification on commercial fruit was the Flavr Savr tomato, engineered in Davis by Calgene Inc. for extended shelf-life and fungal resistance. The Flavr Savr was in stores in 1994, but it didn’t catch on with consumers. The Flavr Savr's genetic package was meant to benefit distributers and wholesalers. The Norfolk product, by contrast, is aimed at the consumers' health and not the success of the supply chain.
“The sale of the bioengineered purple tomato at the Davis Farmers Market is a ‘full circle moment’ for biotechnology in Davis,” Pumplin said.
