José Antonio Gómez Bazán

That was here in the U.S. That was like 25 years ago. Okay. In my breakfast. Here we are. We have these oatmeal with these black things on top. So I said, why not? Let's try it.

I just ate it. It looked like a fruit, you know, like a grape, but different. And I... and I was like, oh, this tastes even better.

And the variety that really excelled in productivity and adaptability to Peruvian weather was Biloxi.

Oh, it's Biloxi, Mississippi. Yeah. Yeah, so it's a variety that came from the U.S.

That was the one that adapted the best to the Peruvian climate. And Biloxi was literally the leader that conquered the Peruvian desert right after the sparrows.

Hi, I'm from Peru. We have had a farm with blueberries. Trust me, we may be very small right now.

Some of them, they were like, eh, maybe not. Knock on my door when you get there.

And basically, I said, OK, I'm going to move back to the U.S.,

We need to connect the pipeline to a major supermarket. in order to move, you know, hundreds of containers of blueberries per week.

Ocean shipping containers with 4,000 cases of blueberries.

Well, the first one that came to my mind was Costco. Those guys were the king of moving volume and good quality products.

He said, I'm not going to buy Biloxi no matter what.

We set him up on a blind test. And guess what? He picked Biloxi as his favorite. You're kidding. Yeah, and he said, I don't believe it. We need to repeat it. So we repeat the blind test, you know, with different varieties. And he, again, picked Biloxi.

He said, you know what, Jose Antonio? Biloxi may not be the best variety, but it's the most consistent variety. I like consistency in my shelf and I will keep a solid base of your fruit on my supermarket because it's really consistent. A consumer may forgive you of a little bit of flavor that is not the best. But a consumer will never forget a soft, mushy blueberry.

I remember my childhood going from Lima to Trujillo. You were on your car, you know, a full two, three hours of just looking at nothing. Nothing on the left, nothing on the right. It was just sand dunes. And then, when he came back to Peru? It was a green ocean.

I couldn't believe it. I was like, where's the desert? Where the desert went? It was like day and night. Different, totally different.