Every day Frieda’s gets email requests from all over the country from potential shoppers requesting specific Frieda’s products be carried by their local markets. The company follows up on every one. There is a good chance the writers’ supermarkets or produce stores are already Frieda’s customers. The privately held company, which releases no financial or sales data, distributes to more than 30,000 retail outlets across all 50 states, according to Caplan. She said the stores typically stock from one to 40 or 50 out of Frieda’s more than 500-item product line.

What Caplan called a “halo affect” and the seeming magic the company has worked with its produce introductions results sometimes in “growers calling us out of desperation because they’ve heard Frieda’s can work magic.” One example was the distribution of a European-style potato. Two brothers from Michigan had received the rights to the French tuber and were growing it in Washington.

“They wanted to speak to us about possibly marketing them. We asked how did you hear about us. They told us ‘we called 200 different companies and almost everyone referred us to you so we figure maybe we should call you.’”

Frieda’s took on the sale of that potato and it was widely distributed. The company’s success and connections with consumers has changed buyers’ attitudes, too, Caplan said. “Produce buyers can no longer object” to stocking Frieda’s newest finds. They worry “if I don’t stock it, my competition will.”