Todd Koons Founder and CEO of Epic Roots is a passionate produce industry innovator and trendsetter who has had a major influence on the way Americans eat salad.
You could say Todd is the Johnny Appleseed of baby lettuce salad (spring mix, mesclun, mixed baby greens). He had the foresight to realize that a product that had been pioneered in the kitchen of America's most innovative restaurant, Chez Panisse, could appeal to a broad range of consumers when commercialized with integrity and passion. Todd understands the value of fresh, delicious food and provides the vital link between heirloom seeds, the fresh food served on people's tables, and an exquisite dining experience.
Growing Up on the Farm
Todd grew up on farms in California and Oregon. From the time he was ten, Todd loved to grow greens and make salads, which was made easy with the large family vegetable garden and open kitchen. He would come up with odd and interesting combinations on his own with no rules to follow. On the weekends, visitors would come by for the gourmet experience, as the door was always open. One of their frequent visitors was John Hudspeth, a legendary gourmet, who would fly up to Oregon from the Bay Area. When Todd was fifteen, Hudspeth arrived at the Oregon farm with Alice Waters and Jerry Budrick of Chez Panisse. Todd prepared one of his special salads for Alice and Kerry, and by the end of the weekend Alice suggested that if Todd found himself in the Bay Area, he should come to the restaurant to try out for a job.
Chez Panisse
Three years later in 1978 when Todd was eighteen he took Alice up on her offer. Todd was offered the job of garde manager or pantry master, which in those early days meant he was a forager, a hunter-gatherer on wheels. Todd was constantly discovering new sources of specialty foods, a skill he brings to Epic Roots today. Baby lettuce was not commercially available, which left the chefs at Chez Panisse to buy many boxes of large leaf lettuce just to spend hours stripping off the outer layers to yield enough of the small, tender leaves to make salad for the hundred or so people who ate at the restaurant each night. The situation found its solution upon Alice's trip to France where she first encountered the wild salad called mesclun. She brought seeds back from France planted some in the gardens behind the house and the head chef and Todd were invited to start a garden in a large lot of about one half acre owned by the Chez Panisse staff doctor. The original salad consisted of dandelion, frisêe, mâche and watercress.
A Year Abroad and back to America
Seeking to expand his culinary horizons, Todd left Chez Panisse in 1983 and traveled to the south of France. After spending time with the food writer and chef, Richard Olney, and restaurateurs, Todd returned to the salad business in Berkeley working as a consultant a Berkeley urban garden called Kona Kai Farms. In the basement of a nearby building, Todd introduced the triple washing approach that has become a standard for the bagged salad industry; setting up stainless sinks to wash the baby lettuce salad they sold to upscale restaurants.
TKO in the Salinas Valley
After working as a consultant in the Salad Bowl of America, the Salinas valley, for a British-owned herb corporation, Todd revisited his dream of selling beautiful salad to America. He located forty acres on the Paulson Ranch within the city limits of Salinas and formed TKO farms, Todd Koons Organics. Todd wanted to be the first consistent, year round, high-quality supplier of organic salad mixes. Todd chose spring mix as a product name because it was already somewhat familiar to the industry and customers. Todd's mix contained a broad range of different greens and the TKO line included: baby Caesar, baby spinach, baby spring mix, baby romaine lettuce, baby Asian mix and baby braising greens. From the beginning his basic mix always had at least sixteen different types of greens. This insistence on variety distinguished it from many of the products that were to follow. In the late 80s and 90s, Todd was the only one working on the commercialization of baby lettuce products. By necessity, Todd had to undertake the development of necessary technologies on his own. He created a mobile washing system as well as a vertical form fill machine that mechanically filled and sealed bags of pre-washed salad. Todd was the first to effectively brand and market baby organic greens. From a few hundred thousand dollars in sales in 1988, the business reached $15 million by 1993. TKO was sold in 1996 and Todd left the company to pursue other interests.
Lasting Legacy
Todd Koons was one of the major innovators in specialty salads with his company TKO farms, and was instrumental in helping create an entirely new and enduring category in the produce market. Today ready-to-eat salads are a $2 billion dollar business. Todd's contribution to the produce industry is based on the unique way he fuses three distinct viewpoints: he combines culinary artistry, focus on quality, and innovation of a chef with the love of nature and dedication to detail of a small-scale organic farmer. Add the technical skill of a modern horticulturalist, throw in a dash of marketing genius and you have a recipe for success. Todd founded Epic Roots in 1998 after feeling like the market was comprised of everyone's me-too versions of a few basic mixes pioneered fifteen years ago. Epic Roots field-grown, heirloom Mâche and Mâche based salads makes specialty salads special again.
