Liberty Orchards
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Wholesale – Packaged Food Manufacture |
| Founded | Cashmere, Washington (1918) |
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Candy, Confections, Fruit products |
| Revenue | $8,100,000[1] |
Number of employees | 80 |
| Website | www |
Liberty Orchards is a packaged food products company located in Cashmere, Washington. Founded originally as an apple farm in 1918 by Armenian business partners [2] Armen Tertsagian and Mark Balaban,[3] the company moved into canning and then confectionery during the 1930s and 1940s.[4] Their products include different types of jellied fruit candies such as Turkish Delight.
Product line
Aplets & Cotlets are Liberty Orchards' oldest and best known products. These two types of confection are mainly sold together in a single box; they are produced from a recipe for locoum using local apples and apricots.
Other flavors produced by the company include pineapple with macadamia nuts, strawberry with walnuts, orange with walnuts, peach with pecans, blueberry with pecans, and raspberry with pecans. They also produce sugar-free, nut-free and chocolate-covered varieties, as well as a number of traditional filled chocolates (truffle, caramel, and mint, for example). In 2009, the company has introduced a cherry-pecan locoum, as well as four varieties (mango, strawberry, watermelon and papaya) dusted with a sweet-sour-spicy coating.
Local community interaction
In September 1997 Liberty Orchards drew criticism for threatening to move production out of Cashmere unless the town met certain demands that the company hoped would increase their brand profile. These were reported by the New York Times at the time:
- "They want all road signs and official correspondence by the city to say 'Cashmere, Home of Aplets and Cotlets'. They have asked that one of the two main streets in town be changed to Cotlets Avenue, and the other one be renamed Aplets Avenue. The candy maker also wants the Mayor and Council to sell City Hall to them, build new parking lots and possibly go to the bond market to start a tourism campaign on behalf of the worldwide headquarters of a company that says its story is 'America in a nutshell'."[5]
Notes
- ^ Staff. "LIBERTY ORCHARDS COMPANY, INC". Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. Retrieved 17 May 2013.
- ^ http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=7624,
- ^ Liberty Orchards: The Early Days of Liberty Orchards...
- ^ Liberty Orchards Aplets & Cotlets: Aplets & Cotlets are born...
- ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/06/us/cashmere-journal-old-fashioned-town-sours-on-candymaker-s-new-pitch.html