Their videos feature way more than mangoes. Think of fruits with names like caimito and tamarillo, longan and langsat, jaboticaba and June plums. They have spikes or seed pods or resemble the human anatomy to those who can’t keep their mind out of the gutter. And they attract both the adventurous and the nostalgic.
That sounded like a dream to his father, Claude, a longtime Miami musician who owns an exotic palm tree nursery he named after his first band, Action Theory. Instead, Rane followed his father down the agricultural path — even through being red-green colorblind made it tougher. “Pretty soon there was fruit all over the house,” said Ed Schlegel. “She started talking about ‘sustainable this, organic that.’”The day she tasted a mango for the first time, at a farmers market near her house when she was 15, “I became a fruit snob,” she said. By 16 she was vegan.
Edelle built Miami Fruit a simple, functional, Shopify website that made it easy to take orders. And she took over all the social media, including Instagram, posting as much as three times a day, where that audience has grown to more than 359,000 followers. She started a daily newsletter.In two years, they had raised enough money to buy 2.
They chose fruits like atemoya or guanabana that can’t be picked too early, ripen quickly and bruise easily. They’re terrible choices for large growers, who have to ensure fruits can stand up to a week of travel. But they’re perfect for small, local farmers who can raise the best fruit for flavor — not hardiness — and ship them within a day or two. They could bypass the traditional supply chain.
When critics ask why their fruit is so expensive — a box can cost over $100 — they stress paying farmers whatever they ask so they can continue growing quality, sustainable fruit at a fair wage. “He does such a service to Redland growers by buying that quality fruit and selling that quality fruit all over the United States,” said Chafin, who offers 75 varieties of bananas from his farm, including the Blue Java.