When Textron Aviation asked the Stefanopoulos family if they would consider changing their order for a Beechcraft King Air 350i to be the first customer to take delivery of the upgraded King Air 360, it was easy to say yes. The only question they had was why the company chose them since they are “just farmers out in the middle of California.”
The first-time aircraft owners soon realized that the sales team at Textron Aviation had noticed shared storylines between the history of the family’s Stamoules Produce Company and that of Beechcraft founders Walter and Olive Ann Beech.
Companies dating back to the late 1920s/early 1930s, founders who were dreamers, untimely deaths, women leaders who stepped into roles that were unheard of in business at the time and longevity, at least partially attributed to innovation within their industries and business practices.
Here’s the story of Stamoules Produce and the Stefanopoulos family, who took delivery of the King Air 360 in November 2020.
Planting the Seeds
Spero Stamoules planted his first cantaloupe crop in 1927, using seeds he’d started collecting from plates while waiting tables at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel after immigrating from Greece as a young man in 1903.
He eventually pursued his dream to farm using those seeds, but it took some time. He was a fruit merchant in San Francisco, then moved back to Greece during World War I. He married his wife Helen in 1921 and returned to the Bay Area with her in 1925. By 1927 he was farming on what is considered by some to be the world’s most productive agricultural land – California’s Central Valley.
He was one of the first cantaloupe farmers in Mendota and is credited with helping the town just west of Fresno become known by some as the Cantaloupe Capital of the World. Spero weathered the Great Depression by selling produce door-to-door and at farmers markets, then started to grow his operation big enough to supply wholesalers and restaurants in neighboring states and the East Coast.
While riding the train in 1944 with the first load of his cantaloupes to travel to New York, he died of a heart attack on the platform at Grand Central Station. He was 54 years old and left behind his wife Helen and Peggy, the 13-month-old daughter they had adopted a year earlier.
“My mother continued on and fulfilled his dream,” Peggy Stefanopoulos said on a video produced in 2020 by Textron Aviation. “His legacy lives on through my husband, Tom. We never changed the name. It’s still Stamoules Produce.”
Similarly, Walter Beech was an early aviation entrepreneur and started Beech Aircraft Company in Wichita, Kansas, in 1932 with his wife Olive Ann and a small group of engineers and investors. Olive Ann became president of the company in 1950 when Walter died from a heart attack at age 59. She was the first woman to head a major aircraft company and went on to have a National Aviation Hall of Fame career.
Helen grew the farm to about 2,000 acres by 1960 and worked in the business the rest of her life; she died at age 85 in 1992.
Peggy married Tom Stefanopoulos, a Greek immigrant, in 1966 and they helped Helen run Stamoules Produce. They continue to lead the company alongside their adult children: Dionysos (Dio) Stefanopoulos, Spero Stefanopoulos and Elena Stefanopoulos.
business. (Credit: Digital Brand)
Starting in the 1960s, the farm expanded into other fruits and vegetables – honeydews, mini watermelons, bell peppers, sweet corn and pistachios, to name a few – and they became more self-reliant. That includes employing the crews who weed and harvest versus contracting for that work to owning their own equipment and machinery and operating a large maintenance shop. They’ve designed much of their harvest equipment and employees manufacture it on-site. They also drill their own wells and install pipeline to make sure the crops are irrigated during droughts.
Adopting field packing has streamlined their process and they’ve also invested in technology and facilities that allows each crop to be pre-cooled, cooled and then shipped in a refrigerated truck within a 24-hour period.
Efficiency and quality has been the key to Stamoules’ longevity and growth to nearly 17,000 acres in production. They produce more than 14 million boxes of produce per year, shipping to wholesalers throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. While you won’t see the brand name, you might purchase Stamoules-grown cantaloupe, honeydew melon, sweet corn or pistachios at a local grocery store, as part of a meal kit or it might be part of your meal at a local restaurant.
With the help of their parents, the third generation is guiding Stamoules Produce into a focus on growing pistachios for their newly developed brand – OPA Pistachios.
Adding a business tool
Developing that part of the business was a big reason the family decided it was time to invest in another business tool.
“You know it’s time to get a plane when you want to expand your business into areas where you haven’t been before,” Spero Stefanopoulos said on the Textron Aviation video.
Stamoules Produce employs anywhere from a few hundred employees to several thousand employees during the peak of harvest. Everyone is based in Mendota, from the employees working in the fields and the distribution facility to those at corporate headquarters.
In the past decade, Stamoules Produce has expanded its legacy crops while also moving toward significantly developing its pistachio business. The family now farms 11,500 acres of pistachios and is beginning the process of building a hullery. Instead of shipping off all of its pistachios to wholesalers or to be sold by The Wonderful Company, Stamoules plans to begin marketing its pistachios under its own brand that you’d be able to purchase in a grocery store.
When the family started to talk about purchasing an aircraft, they turned to Katie Stefanopoulos, a 7,500-hour pilot and wife of Dio. She said until now the company has relied mostly on handling relationships over the phone or during meetings at industry gatherings.
Katie’s father was a charter pilot and her mother flew recreationally. Katie earned her pilot’s license as a teenager and intended to pursue law school after earning an undergraduate degree from University of California-Davis. Instead, she made piloting her career. She’s been a flight instructor and flown cargo, medevac and charter flights, including about 500 hours in King Air aircraft. She was last a full-time contract pilot before having her son in 2019.
When it came time to decide what aircraft to buy, she narrowed down the field to two options based on the company’s range, cabin size and short runway needs: the Beechcraft King Air 250 and the Pilatus PC-12. They took demo flights and the pilot of the King Air, a friend of Katie’s, mentioned he could also take them up in a King Air 350. The size and feel of the 350’s cabin was an instant hit. They contacted Beechcraft and started working on purchasing a 350 until the company gave them the option of being the launch customer for the King Air 360.
(Credit: Digital Brand)
Katie is the company’s pilot and said she expects to fly the King Air about 150 to 200 hours a year, allowing their sales team and company leadership to meet with customers across North America on a consistent basis for the first time.
“We’ll have the owners going out, the sales team going out – they’ll be meeting customers they’ve had a relationship with for years but had very little face-to-face time with, as well as meeting potential new customers in the pistachio market,” she said. “It’s nice to have that handshake and that face-to-face time. It’s amazing what you can learn about your customer that you just don’t when you’re talking on the phone.”
They’re also using the King Air to visit pistachio growers as Stamoules researches growing that segment of their business. Some of these farming operations would require a three-hour drive from a region’s main airport, while the King Air can get them much closer to their final destination. That turns what would have been a one or two day trip flying commercially into a day trip.
They’ve had the King Air just a few months and the pandemic has slowed some of their travel. Most of the missions have been in the western U.S., to get the sales team acclimated to having an aircraft available, and so far passengers and the pilot have been pleased.
“It’s such a great aircraft,” Katie said. “We’ve got the whole Collins Aerospace Pro Line Fusion® avionics system, the autothrottle system and the interior is just beautiful. It’s got that great hum to the engine. It’s performed exactly the way we thought it would.”
The King Air’s custom paint scheme featuring generous use of orange, blue and purple – each a favorite color of the siblings – is quick to draw attention on the ramp.
“My husband Dio is an architect by trade and he loves coming up with creative designs,” Katie said. “He put a lot of thought into it and I’m so glad we did it this way. I’ve always thought that if you take the time to buy a brand-new aircraft, why wouldn’t you make it your own with the paint.”
Stamoules hangars the aircraft at Fresno International Airport until the company builds a hangar on the farm to go with the runway they installed in 2020.
“This aircraft represents that we’re 93 years strong, and we’re moving forward,” Dio said when the family took delivery of the King Air in Wichita.
Spero added: “We believe that our grandparents are looking down at us, probably enthralled with what’s happened in our business and the direction it’s going to go.”