It introduced a pear-apple and other pear-based fruit blends to provide its members with an outlet for processing pears.

In 1975, Tree Top succeeded in marketing juice blends. It also began marketing frozen concentrated cider that same year. In 1970, with the consumer demand for organic foods on the rise, Tree Top introduced an unfiltered apple juice.

Then, eight years after the becoming a cooperative, Tree Top decided not to limit itself to juicing the apples and began to slice them as well.Д«y the late 1960s, Tree Top had two plants specializing in dried apple products, and they would eventually become the largest supplier of dried apple products in the world. The next challenge was to convince consumers on the idea of frozen apple juice they managed to accomplish their mission. Recognizing that freezing juice was an economically prudent way to ship, Tree Top pioneered frozen apple juice concentrate in 1963. New Structure and Pioneering Processes in the 1960sДЄfter the cooperative's inception in May 1960, the number of orchardists to join it increased until it reached its 1980s peak of more than 3,700 grower-owners, who were based not only in Washington, but Oregon and Idaho as well. This group of growers approached and purchased Tree Top from Charbonneau. Not knowing what to do with their inferior apples and tired of wasting their fruit -not to mention paying to have it hauled away -a few Washington growers banded together to save money by forming a cooperative that would handle and process the excess apples. The rest were paying to have their fruit dumped or buried in canyons and rivers. If he did not approve of what he tasted, Charbonneau ordered the plant's entire 5,000-gallon holding tank of apple juice to be poured down the drain.Дuring this time, apples were overly abundant in the state of Washington so much so that in 1950, Life magazine featured a double-page spread of 5,000 railway cars of fruit being dumped into the Columbia River because there was a lack of processors to handle it all.Д«y 1960 orchard owners in the state of Washington were selling their fruit for $5 a ton, and those were the lucky ones. He personally tried a sample of freshly produced juice each time a batch of apples was pressed. The name was not only catchy but meaningful in that at the time the popular belief was that the best fruit grew at the top of the trees.Д¬harbonneau kept his office in the plant facility so that he could closely oversee production. The name Tree Top came about from the winning entry in a brand-naming contest Charbonneau held among his employees. His original product line would include apple juice and apple cider, each available to consumers in three sizes. Charbonneau's mission was to develop a high-quality brand of apple juice. Charbonneau bought a small apple processing plant on 'Produce Row' in Selah, Washington. Tree Top's roots can be traced back to the late 1940s, when entrepreneur Bill Charbonneau and his family moved from southern California to central Washington's Yakima Valley. Tree Top's juice-testing laboratories are considered world class and it has the only 'trained taste profile panel' in the apple juice industry. While apple juice and cider remain the backbone of Tree Top's retail sales, it also markets other consumer packaged goods, such as blended fruit juices and fruit bars, and produces and sells a wide variety of dried and frozen fruit products used as ingredients in the food industry. The company also has a bottling facility in Rialto, California. Five of its processing facilities are in the state of Washington, with another one located in Oregon. Tree Top's corporate headquarters are located in Selah, Washington. Owned by 1,460 growers in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, its customers include distributors and retailers throughout the nation, as well as manufacturers in the food industry worldwide. One of the largest apple cooperatives in the United States, Tree Top, Inc., processes more than 500,000 tons of fruit every year to make apple juice and cider, as well as apple sauce and other fruit-based products and concentrates.

NAIC: 311423 Dried and Dehydrated Food Manufacturing 311421 Fruit and Vegetable Canning

Tree top apple juice