Like many new companies in this era of technology, the needs of the owners led to the launching of Instacart, an online grocery shopping and delivery service.

“It was a problem that we personally had that we wanted to solve,” said Max Mullen, a co-owner of Instacart. “We wanted to get high-quality groceries and have them delivered quickly, and nobody was doing that.”

Through spring and early summer, Simonian Fruit Co. keeps busy with an assortment of stone fruit, and from early July on into fall, the company also ships table grapes, including specialty Champagne grapes in red and green varieties.

But Simonian Fruit’s big fall item is pomegranates, according to Jeff Simonian, vice president of sales.

The company’s pomegranate season this year was expected to start around the first of September. Like most California crops, that is “a little earlier this year” than normal, he said. “Probably a week to two weeks earlier.”

The California fresh grape season “has been good” so far, said Sean Stockton, president of Sundale Sales, the marketing arm of Sundale Vineyards in Tulare, CA, in an interview with The Produce News Aug. 4. “Season-to-date movement has been good. Prices have been excellent. We have had a good start to a little bit earlier season.”

But the bulk of the season lay ahead. “We are going to come into some of our peak varieties here, from mid-August all the way into October,” Stockton said.

William (Bill) Yandow, a former owner and executive of Fowler & Huntting in Hartford, CT, died May 25 at his home in Florida. He was 71 years old.

This summer Miami-based Growers Are Us is rolling out a new six-ounce package of its “VegDeLite”-brand single-serving vegetables.

This fall Riveridge Produce Marketing, Inc., based in Sparta, MI, will continue a successful vacuum apple harvester test launched in the 2103 season.

An Aug. 21 company press release indicated that the pilot test last season ran for six-weeks. This showed “significant promise in several areas… and the company has plans to expand its use of the equipment again this fall.”