Tkm Farms

As the farm sign says, TKM is a grower of quality lettuce, supplying processors. When bagged salads first hit the marketplace, however, they were mostly produced on the West Coast. As demand increased, processors built salad plants east of the Mississippi to serve areas along the East Coast.
In 1996, three of the Basore brothers — Toby, Kevin, and Michael — started TKM Farms with the intention of supplying processors with lettuce. Their father, Tom Sr., helped his sons find a partner: Bengard Ranch in Salinas, CA.
Today, all six of the Basore brothers are involved in the business. According to Brian, one of the six, each brother — which includes Toby, Kevin, Michael, Stephen, and Tom Jr. — handles a specific component of the business (to find out more about the duties of each Basore brother, see “A Band Of Brothers” sidebar).
Once the partnership between the Basore and Bengard families was established, the next step was to find the right lettuce varieties to grow for processing. They turned to university researchers and seed breeders to develop varieties of iceberg and Romaine lettuce that were on par with varieties grown in the West.
“The game-changing moment occurred when the lettuce variety Gator was developed,” says Toby, who manages production and crop inputs. “That was the variety that put us on the map. Gator was a variety that had no internal problems and a short core for processing.
“We learned how to slot like they do on the West Coast for the fall, winter, or spring months with different varieties,” Toby continues. “Our program got tighter and we had a consistent supply of quality lettuce all season. Our business was small at first. We were trialing new varieties and going in to visit customers. Florida had a bad name for lettuce for processing, but a few customers tried our lettuce and they realized ours was comparable to what was produced on the West Coast.” (By Rosemary Gordon/Senior Managing Editor of )