Good Fruit Grower / October 2006 / Last Bite

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Last Bite

Harry and David

Cub was the brand under which the Fancy grade of fruit was packed and sold by Bear Creek Orchards in Medford, Oregon. Their top grade, or Extra Fancy, was marketed with a label featuring an adult bear logo that can still be seen atop the sign at the company's office in Medford. Cub, representing the second-best grade, was redesigned several times; at one time, the cub was a friendly black teddy bear hanging on a fence. The version depicted here was a more modern design used in the late 1940s and the 1950s.

The orchard and the brand names were originally owned by a group of men named Orwell, Clary, Meyers, and Whistler. Later, in 1910, the operation was acquired by Samuel Rosenberg, whose two sons, Harry and David Rosenberg, later made Bear Creek Orchards famous throughout the world. Harry and David, who changed their name from Rosenberg to Holmes at the outset of World War II, were extremely creative and imaginative. They introduced the idea of a special gift-pack pear, and thus were born the famous Royal Riviera gift pack featuring the Comice pear and the now familiar Fruit of the Month Club.

As the gift-pack business became more and more dominant (especially beginning in 1933), Bear Creek Orchards became less and less of a commercial fruit-growing and packing operation. Even though the Holmes brothers eventually bought the Comice Orchards to secure a steady supply of pears, it was primarily for the gift-pack business, not as a means to increase tonnage for their original and traditional fruit-packing business although this did continue to a limited degree into the mid-1900s.

Both Harry and David are now deceased, and the next generation of the family, David Holmes, John Holmes, and Nanette Tyson, sold the company to R.J. Reynolds and left the business entirely. In the fall of 1986, Reynolds sold to Shaklee, which was then acquired by Yaminouchi Pharmaceuticals in 1989.