Growers of Quality (American) Lettuce

America’s winter crop — grown in Everglades muck since 1969.

Our story Food safety
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The largest lettuce grower east of the Mississippi.

TKM Bengard Farms grows iceberg, romaine, leaf and specialty lettuces on 5,500 acres of the richest soil in America — the muck of Florida’s Everglades Agricultural Area. From mid-November through April, while fields across the rest of the country sit frozen, our harvest is rolling.

That harvest moves through the nation’s major processors and retailers into supermarkets, restaurants, schools and salad bowls coast to coast. If you eat salad east of the Mississippi, there’s a good chance you’ve eaten our lettuce.

Two pioneer families. One farm.

TKM Bengard began as a handshake between two founding families of American lettuce — the Basores of the Florida muck and the Bengards of California’s Salinas Valley.

  1. 1920s

    The Basore family starts farming muck soil in McGuffey, Ohio.

  2. 1969

    The family puts down roots in Florida’s Everglades Agricultural Area, where the black lake-bottom muck grows lettuce like nowhere else in the East.

  3. 1996

    TKM Farms is founded, and Tom Basore joins forces with Tom Bengard of Salinas, California — two pioneers of the lettuce industry — to form TKM Bengard Farms.

  4. 2003

    Cypress Cooling opens: a 70,000-square-foot packing and pre-cooling house built to move lettuce from field heat into the cold chain within hours.

  5. Today

    Four generations of know-how feed the eastern United States all winter long, season after season.

5,500
acres in production
15+
varieties of fresh produce
70,000
square feet of cooling capacity
Nov–Apr
the Florida winter harvest

Iceberg is the flagship. The bench runs deep.

  • Icebergthe top crop
  • Romaine
  • Green leaf
  • Red leaf
  • ButterBoston
  • Escarole
  • Endive
  • Field corn

Every variety is bred for Florida’s unique growing conditions — developed season after season with the University of Florida and independent seed breeders.

Safe isn’t a slogan here. It’s the operation.

Grown, cooled and shipped entirely in the USA, to standards built to exceed federal, state and local requirements.

Grown right

Good Agricultural Practices in every field: trained crews, strict hygiene and sanitation, and an in-house food safety team working the rows every day to prevent problems before they start.

Cooled fast

Refrigerated trailers meet the harvest at the field — a practice we helped pioneer — then product is vacuum-cooled at Cypress Cooling and held in an unbroken cold chain to your dock.

Audited and verified

Audited every year by our customers and by independent third parties, including NSF Davis Fresh and Primus Labs. Our trace-back program is tested every growing season.

Good for the Glades

Farming here comes with a duty of stewardship. Everglades Agricultural Area farmers have met or beaten Everglades water-quality standards for more than 25 straight years.

The Cypress Cooling facility in Belle Glade, Florida, with an American flag out front
Cypress Cooling Our packing and pre-cooling house in Belle Glade — from these docks, Florida lettuce reaches the whole eastern seaboard.

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