Dole Food Company, Inc.

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Dole Food Company, Inc.

31355 Oak Crest Drive
Westlake Village, California 91361
U.S.A.
(818) 879-6600
Fax: (818) 879-6973

Public Company
Incorporated: 1894 as the Castle & Cooke Co., Inc.
Sales: $3.4 billion
Employees: 50,000
Stock Exchanges: New York Pacific
SICs: 0174 Citrus Fruits; 5148 Fresh Fruits and Vegetables; 5149 Groceries & Related Products, Nee; 2033 Canned Fruits & Vegetables; 2034 Dehydrated Fruits, Vegetables, Soups; 2024 Ice Cream & Frozen Desserts; 6552 Subdividers & Developers, Nec

The Dole Food Company, Inc., is the world’s largest producer and distributer of pineapple and a global leader in the processing and marketing of a wide variety of fruits, nuts, and vegetables. The company’s real estate interests, managed through its 80 percent-owned subsidiary, Castle & Cooke Co., Inc., represent a significant sideline, as do two luxury resorts in Hawaii owned and operated by Dole.

Christopher Columbus first brought pineapples from the Caribbean to Europe, where they were called “ananas,” a corruption of the Indian word “nana,” or aromatic. However, the English referred to the fruit as pineapple, finding it similar in appearance to the pine cone and as juicy and crisp as an apple. For centuries, pineapples remained expensive delicacies.

In the 1880s, English seaman Captain John Kidwell decided to try mass marketing pineapple, and after disappointing attempts to cultivate the wild Hawaiian variety, he opted to import a Florida pineapple known as the “smooth Cayenne.” However, the fresh pineapple had to be shipped thousands of miles to market, which took several weeks, with no refrigeration.

While Kidwell never made a successful business from commercially grown pineapple, James Drummond Dole did. A 21-year-old graduate of Harvard, Dole arrived in Hawaii in 1899. His cousin, Sanford B. Dole, an influential politician who became governor of the newly acquired territory of Hawaii, encouraged James’s ambition to market pineapple commercially.

By 1901 James Dole had acquired 60 acres of land 18 miles north of Honolulu, in Wahiawa, and had formed the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. His groves of smooth Cayenne pineapples were ready to be harvested two years later. Rather than trying to export the fresh fruit, Dole decided to market his pineapple in cans. He established his cannery near his pineapple groves, allowing him to achieve the best results by canning soon after harvesting the ripened produce. The Hawaiian Pineapple Company packaged and marketed nearly 2,000 cases of canned pineapple in 1903.

Two years later Dole was shipping 25,000 cases of canned pineapple. The company’s success was facilitated by a new railroad constructed between Wahiawa and Honolulu, as well as by the fact that ample, cheap labor was available, allowing the company to keep its costs low. In addition, Dole persuaded the American Can Company to establish a manufacturing plant next to his cannery. For Dole, this eliminated the expense of importing cans from the mainland, so that vast quantities of pineapple could be processed quickly and cheaply. However, the company’s increased supply depended on a corresponding demand, and, outside of residents on the California coast, few Americans had ever seen, much less tasted, pineapple. Furthermore, the company’s existing market was already approaching saturation.

In 1911 engineer Henry Ginaca, an employee of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, invented a machine that could process 100 pineapple cylinders a minute. Such production facilities enabled the company to market its produce in much of the United States. Developing a successful marketing strategy became a high priority for the company during this time.

Together with several smaller companies also involved in the processing of pineapple, Dole financed an advertising blitz in the mainland’s magazines and newspapers, promoting canned pineapple products under exotic, foreign brand names, such as Ukelele and Outrigger. As a result, demand increased significantly. Toward the end of World War I, in 1918, Dole’s Hawaiian Pineapple Company was producing one million cases annually and had gained a reputation as the largest processor of pineapples in the world. During this time, Dole purchased more land in order to expand his business.

By the mid-1920s Castle & Cooke Ltd., a Hawaiian real estate and land development company established in 1851, had become the dominant stockholder in Hawaiian Pineapple. Also during this time, surplus supply compelled Dole and other pineapple growers to pool their resources to mount an even bigger national advertising campaign than they had before the war. Using the new medium of radio, the company aired advertising using slogans such as “It Cuts with A Spoon—Like a Peach” and “You Can Thank Jim Dole for Canned Pineapples.” As a result, sales and profits increased dramatically.

However, with the onset of the Great Depression, the company’s sales declined and its advertising budget was depleted. The introduction of a new product, pineapple juice, was unsuccessful due to the company’s inability to successfully promote it. In the first nine months of 1932, Hawaiian Pineapple lost over $5 million, and the principal stockholders, Castle & Cooke, took over Dole’s company. Thereafter the Hawaiian Pineapple Company became Castle & Cooke’s principal business, and while Dole’s name was affixed to the company’s products in 1934, Dole himself was relegated to an essentially powerless role.

Nevertheless, the new owners managed to reverse the downward trend of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. With greater financial resources at its disposal, the company launched a major advertising campaign for pineapple juice, boosting sales and putting the company back on a profitable footing by 1936. Sales of pineapple juice were also facilitated by the end of Prohibition, as the company promoted pineapple juice as a mixer for liquors, particularly gin.

The company continued to report healthy profits over the next two decades. By the 1950s Americans were spending more on food than any nation on earth, and food companies were quickly expanding their markets to accommodate demand. Castle & Cooke introduced several new pineapple products during this time, including both fresh and canned pineapple, processed in chunks and slices or crushed, in addition to expanding their markets to include bananas, citrus fruit, macadamia nuts, vegetables, and even tuna.

Given the tremendous diversification of Dole products, advertising became critical to ensuring the company’s dominance in the marketplace. First, in order to capitalize on public recognition of the Dole brand name, Castle & Cooke decided to use it on the labels of several of its non-pineapple food products. Also, television became an important medium, and by the 1960s James Dole’s dream of making pineapple as familiar as apples and oranges had been realized.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Dole took advantage of the increasing demand for nutritious foods, advertising its products as healthy additions to the diets of adults and children. During this time, the company introduced Dole canned pineapple in a “lite,” low calorie, natural juice. In the early 1990s, Dole launched a major, multimedia advertising campaign accompanied by the slogan “How’d You Do Your Dole Today?” to encourage consumers to eat more vegetables and fruit, including pineapple, regularly. As a result of its effective advertising, Dole has maintained the biggest market share of pineapples and bananas in North America.

In 1991, under chairperson and CEO David H. Murdock, Castle & Cooke’s stockholders voted to use the Dole name to represent all of their fruit and vegetable operations, reorganizing under the name Dole Food Company, Inc. The Castle & Cooke name was retained solely for the company’s real estate business, which became a subsidiary of Dole Food, with operations in Hawaii, California, and Arizona. No longer dependent on pineapple as its sole source of profits, the Dole Food Company conglomerate produces a variety of fresh and packaged foods and beverages. The product line includes canned, frozen, and dried fruits, fruit juices and beverages, 30 different types of vegetables, and a variety of nuts. In the early 1990s, ice cream bars were added to the list of Dole food products. The company also retained interests in beer processing in Honduras, sugar refining in Hawaii, and tropical flower marketing in the Philippines. In addition to the individual consumer, Dole’s market has been expanded to include other food processors, who use Dole products as ingredients.

Expansion into international markets has also been important to the company. While Dole products have the leading market share in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Japan, the company has also gained a significant share of the European market. In 1989 a division of Dole Foods was established in London, poised to take advantage of imminent changes in the European common market. Since 1991, Dole’s international growth strategy has included expansion into eastern Europe, South Korea, and the Middle East, where eight branch offices have been opened. In 1993 Dole was operating in more than 70 countries worldwide. Furthermore, Dole has established important manufacturing centers in Thailand and the Philippines.

Dole has survived several fluctuations in the market and remains the most widely recognized brand of canned fruits and vegetables in North America and the world. The company’s continued success depends on its ability to penetrate international markets as well as to provide an increasingly health conscious public with the produce they demand, two areas in which the company has excelled.