When you ask the founder of the Yummy Fruit Company John Paynter if he would have done anything differently during his tenure of growing fruit, he says: “I wouldn’t have changed too much”.

This year the Hawke’s Bay business marks 50 years of revolutionising the fruit-growing industry, which now sells three varieties of nectarines, 19 varieties of commercial apples, and many other fruits.

Speaking with Hawke’s Bay Today John and his son Paul reflected on the birth and life of their beloved Yummy marketing company in 1974 and its evolution.

Apple doesn't fall far from the tree with John Paynter (left) and son Paul. Photo / Michaela Gower

They spoke of many exciting moments, revolutionary firsts and developing a successful fruit-growing business, but said it wasn’t rosy red apples all the time.

“We have got an immense number of firsts and we have also got a long list of failures.”

He has been growing fruit all his life and will continue for as long as his two feet let him.

“One of our great strengths have been we have had a lifelong passion,” John said.

John comes from a family of fruit growers who settled in Hastings to grow stone fruit and apples.

“I’ve always been an enthusiastic horticulturalist right from the time of a little kid - I was never going to do anything else but this.”

John Paynter and his sister Judy Bark pictured in 2016 with a portrait of great-grandfather John Paynter, who started the family’s fruit growing in Hawke's Bay. Photo / Paul Taylor

He said he quickly came to learn that growing the fruit was an easy job, it was marketing the product that brought the real challenge.

“On this 11-acre [4.4ha] orchard we grew lots of stuff apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, and pears - and not a big volume of anything.”

He said it was a time when everybody grew stone fruit.

“One we needed to grow bigger volumes for critical mass, and secondly we needed to establish a marketing environment that broke the barriers of the marketplace.”

The birth of the Yummy Fruit Company

In 1960 John and lifelong friend Peter Anderson planted a new variety of nectarines said to be more durable and able to be grown on a larger scale.

“We were young guys with heaps of enthusiasm, we were just in our early 30s and when we started to get some production of these we realised we needed to keep together.”

John recalled the pair decided to create an “umbrella image” that went beyond being a fruit grower.

“We came up with the idea of forming a company called Yummy Nectarines ltd.”

The pair visited the National Bank in Hastings and were granted a loan of $5000 for promotion and packaging.

The Yummy Fruit Company was founded in 1974 by John Paynter. Photo / Michaela Gower

Paul said this was a revolutionary idea for the industry as at the time the idea of a brand was a new way of thinking.

“The idea of putting some kind of brand on a fruit was completely new and pretty crazy,” Paul said.

The spring of 1973 was spent working on packaging design, before Yummy’s debut in Auckland in January 1974.

It was then the pair faced one of the first of their many challenges.

The palletised fruit travelling by train turned up late for the auction and was destroyed.

“We located the railway waggon and we opened it up to see it smashed to bits on the floor and the heat coming out of it was extraordinary - so we cancelled the sale because we didn’t have any fruit for the launch of Yummy,” John said.

The fruit was later repacked and sold without the auction and they returned home from the disaster “shattered”.

“We reworked the pallets so we could handle them differently and get them on a refrigerated truck and we aimed to get the next load to the market.”

John said they worked day and night and were finally able to relaunch, with success the second time.

Revolutionising the fruit-growing industry one bite at a time

In 1975 the Yummy Fruit Company revolutionised the fruit-growing business again by placing stickers on their products in another effort to connect growers and consumers.

“We were the first people in the world to put those annoying stickers on fruit - nobody had done it before,” Paul said.

Now the biodegradable and food-safe stickers are collected by New Zealand school children in what they say should have been a short-term promotion, but has become one of their most well-known attributes - stickers for funded sports gear.

John said every decision made was to strategically lift their product in the eye of buyers and consumers.

“In Auckland, there were four different auction firms, but we didn’t send to all four we sent it to one, so if the buyers wanted to buy it they had to go this one floor and compete.”

Paul said he spent his school holidays in the stone fruit orchards and along with his father began to see the need to make themselves a brand beyond summer.

They worked to expand their brand reputation and focused on growing apples and in March 1994 were once again left with a disaster after a hailstorm struck and destroyed 80% of their crops.

“We were again almost bankrupt overnight.”

He said they refocused and turned away from export and into the domestic market, which helped them to regain much of the financial loss.

To further bolster their ability to supply fruit they built a controlled atmosphere for better year-round storage.

“We put the apples in an induced coma and that’s how we keep them fresh.”

Since then their business Johnny Appleseed and marketing company Yummy has sold top-quality fruit to buyers and telling the story of fruit growing.

Today the business sells 80% of its products to the domestic market.

“The most important thing was not to go broke,” John said.

A different kind of 50-year celebration with a stark reminder

The Yummy Fruit Company and Johnny Appleseed orchards suffered another setback when Cyclone Gabrielle destroyed an estimated 180,000 trees across their 50 blocks across Hawke’s Bay.

“We should be celebrating but we are not, we had this thing called Cyclone Gabrielle and it’s destroyed us,” Paul said.

Instead, the men chose to continue getting out of bed, growing fruit, and producing a product that has in Paul’s words “accidentally become a household name”.