Frieda Caplan, ‘Kiwi Queen,’ dies at 96

Arriving each morning at 1 a.m., dressed in a skirt and heels and ready for work in the rough-and-tumble of the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, Frieda Caplan stood out - an exotic exception, much like the wares she began selling there in 1962.

Among the many merchants peddling tomatoes, onions and other mainstays of the traditional American dinner table, Caplan was for many years the lone woman. The staples of her stand were not staples at all. Rather, she dealt in rarities - the kiwi when the furry brown fruit was known as a Chinese gooseberry, alfalfa sprouts before they were a favorite of healthfood nuts, and avocados before the brunch crowd began eating them on toast.

With her ever-evolving array of offerings, which she sold to specialty shops as well as to chains including Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Costco, Caplan was credited with whetting the American appetite for dozens of once-rare fruits and vegetables that today are commonplace in groceries, kitchens and restaurants.

Caplan – known to admirers as the “Kiwi Queen” for her role in popularizing the fruit in the United States – died Jan. 18 at her home in Los Alamitos, California. She was 96.

Caplan had no experience in produce sales when she entered the trade in the 1950s as a bookkeeper for the wholesale operation run by her husband’s aunt and uncle. She had recently given birth to Karen, her first daughter, and was seeking work that would provide the flexibility necessary to nurse the baby. The early-morning hours of the wholesale fruit-and-vegetable trade suited her perfectly.

As Caplan told the story, she was managing the stand while the owners were on vacation when a client placed a request for a quantity of mushrooms in the neighborhood of 500 pounds. Frantically searching for a supplier able to satisfy such a large order, Caplan personally drove to a mushroom farm to procure them.

She opened her own stand in 1962, and it grew into the modern-day company with annual sales of $60 million, according to Karen Caplan.

When she was starting out, mushrooms and pineapple were considered exotic.

“We didn’t have innovative produce departments,” she told the New York Times in 1985. “The mindset of produce merchandisers was potatoes, onions, grapefruit and apples. It was a matter of finding people who were innovative and progressive and getting them together with people who had something to offer.”