The roots of Boggiatto Produce were planted in the early 1920s when Antonio "Tony" Boggiatto, an Italian immigrant, harvested his first crops in the fertile soil of the Salinas Valley near Castroville, California.

Tony and his wife, Gussie, planted their 100-acre ranch with lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes and artichokes. The artichokes were their most successful crop and the family eventually focused on growing them exclusively.

In the early 1950s, their son Gene Boggiatto established the area’s first roadside produce stand and started his own artichoke shipping operation. Beginning with one small truck, Gene drove from the Castroville Ranch to grocery stores in the San Jose area selling boxes of artichokes along the way.

Around 1956, he began packing and selling artichokes for other area growers. As the volume grew, Gene consolidated the entire packing operation under one roof in 1961, opening the first successful, centralized artichoke packing shed. With the new facility to support continued growth, Boggiatto Packing Co., Inc. soon became the third largest artichoke shipper in the United States.

Along the way, the Boggiatto family pioneered other agricultural firsts. In the 1950s, Boggiatto Packing was the first to ship artichokes in corrugated cartons instead of wood boxes. The company was also the first to ship artichokes by air in the 1960s. In the 1980s, Boggiatto was the first to effectively pre-cool artichokes before shipping.

Gene’s son, Michael, joined the family business in 1975 to develop an artichoke mail order division. When Gene retired, Michael assumed leadership of the Boggiatto family business and expanded to include handling of other types of produce.