Michael Layous, sales and marketing representative for The Garlic Co., a grower, packer and shipper headquartered in Bakersfield, CA, said the company will be exhibiting at Booth No. 46 at the upcoming PMA Foodservice Conference & Expo in Monterey, CA, July 25-27.

"Our team will be represented at the event by John Layous, a partner, Bob Lords, sales representative, and me," said Layous.

"Our variety of garlic products and pack types will be on full display,” he continued. “While The Garlic Co. has customers in the retail and industrial arenas, the strength of our business is definitely in the foodservice sector."

The Garlic Co.'s foodservice products are distributed nationwide. Its foodservice customers range across the board, including broad-line distributors, independent foodservice distributors, nationwide restaurant chains, hotels, resorts, cruise lines, hospitals and caterers.

Layous noted that the company has fortunately observed a gradual increase in its foodservice business as the economy improves.

"We do get the impression people are eating out a little more and certainly more dishes are being prepared with garlic," he said.

The Garlic Co. completed the renovation of its existing packaging room two months ago.

"The upgrade provides us more than double the space we had previously," said Layous. "This certainly makes for a more comfortable and spacious working environment, but it also enables us to handle a greater volume of output."

He added that as The Garlic Co. transitions from the 2013 crop to the 2014 crop, the demand remains high and the market for California garlic remains strong.

"We expect this to continue for the foreseeable future," Layous noted. "Last week [June 16] we started the harvest of our 2014 California early garlic crop. As a whole, the early garlic crop looks good to very good. There are a few developmental issues of some bulbs not maturing properly. They are not sizing exactly how we would like, but it is not too big of an issue. Concerning our early organic garlic, the yield appears to be decent and the quality to be nice.”

"We expect to start the harvest of our 2014 late California garlic around July 20," he continued. "The late crop also looks good. We are seeing some of the same developmental issues in the late crop as we have observed in the early variety, but again, it's nothing to worry about too much. We are excited that the season is finally here and to see how the 2014 crop plays out."