Sunnyvale: Landmark C.J. Olson’s Cherries fruit stand to close Sept. 30

By Julia Prodis Sulek and Khalida Sarwari

Deborah Olson was born here in the 1950s at the height of cherry season, and now, at the season’s end, she has announced the bad news: the heart of the family’s century-old cherry business, the landmark C.J. Olson Cherries farm stand, is shutting down.

The Sunnyvale institution that fronts El Camino Real and remains one of the last vestiges of the Valley of Hearts Delight couldn’t survive the competition from the nearby specialty markets. And Olson herself, now in her 60s, is wearing out. For the last two cherry seasons, she couldn’t find workers and, with a bad elbow, had to sort the cherries and apricots and put them in baskets all herself.

“It’s hard to get anybody to sort cherries,” she said. “How do you put that on Craigslist?”

Her 83-year-old father, Charlie Olson, still tends to 13 acres of cherries and apricots nearby and sells the fruit to the stand. But that orchard is owned by the city of Sunnyvale, which purchased the land in the 1970s from one of the Olsons’ old neighbors, and built a community center on part of it. The Sunnyvale Historical Society, with Deborah Olson serving as a member, petitioned the city to save the orchard and have it designated as a heritage site. That property was never part of the Olson farm, so the demise of the Olson fruit stand — built in 2000 in the exact location of the stand Deborah Olson worked with her grandmother, Rose — is a heartbreaking blow to the family and the community.

“It’s sad. All my life I’ve been in the fruit stand,” Charlie Olson said Tuesday on his way to the barn on the old orchard. “We talked it over. She was right. You can’t keep running in the red. It’s not one problem, but a bunch of problems. She did the right thing and honorable thing. You have to move on and do what you can.”

When Deborah Olson announced her decision during a Sunnyvale City Council meeting Tuesday evening, those in attendance gasped. She got choked up as she spoke of the four-generation family business started by her great-grandparents in 1899 and of the fruit stand her grandmother opened in 1932. Olson put her hand to her chest to help get the words out.

“I want you to know we will be closing our doors Sept. 30,” she told the council, her voice getting high as she fought back tears, “after more than 100 years of serving the community.”

Over the years, extended family sold off parcels of the original farm for development. By the 1980s, 16 acres were left, Olson said, but by then “the orchards were not producing anymore.” Heavy rains damaged the root systems of the trees and “a lot of the trees fell over.”

The family, including her father and aunt, decided to lease all 16 acres to the Irvine Company, which built the Cherry Orchard Shopping Center on which the fruit stand sits.

Although the fruit stand is closing, Olson said she will continue her wholesale operation, selling cherries, apricots and other delicacies to local grocery stores such as Lunardi’s, Draegers and Zanotto’s and keeping the kiosks and displays at the San Jose and Oakland airports. She also will continue to ship fruit, which she sources primarily from orchards in South America, to restaurants around the globe, including France where she studied as a chef and became close friends and pen pals with the late Julia Child. Martha Stewart was a visitor to the fruit stand and a fan or her cherries. Olson even shipped fruit to Prince Albert of Monaco.

News of the closure was another heartbreak for Santa Clara Valley old-timers, who are still mourning the pending closure of Orchard Supply Hardware, which was founded in 1931 in San Jose. Last week, its parent company, Lowe’s, announced it was closing all the stores by the end of the year. San Jose Tofu, another beloved labor intensive, mom-and-pop operation, announced it was closing in Japantown earlier this year.

“Everything is closing. What’s going on?” asked Carol Rutledge, who’s been a fruit stand customer for 15 years. “It makes me sad. Some of my favorite haunts are closing. In a lot of these small places, you know who to ask for or they know you. It’s the loss of a community feeling.”

She will miss the fresh cherries in particular, she said. “They’re expensive, but they just don’t taste the same at Trader Joe’s or Costco.”

Fiona Walsh, a resident in her 40s who moved to Sunnyvale from Australia, said she will miss what the fruit stand symbolized in a sea of development.

“It helped connect us to the beauty of community, kindness and caring for the farming history of the Valley of Hearts Delight,” she said.

In the old stand, Olson would spend every summer at her grandmother’s side. When the original, termite-infested stand was demolished  in 2000, “it was gut-wrenching. I saw my grandmother, I saw all the different workers I had come to work with and respect on the farm — everything flashed by with the wrecking ball.”

She had it rebuilt — just feet away from the busy El Camino on the same footprint — within six months, just in time for the next cherry season. It’s twice as large as the original, but its simple character remains: board and batten siding,  a corrugated roof and old wooden apricot boxes stacked as shelves.

Sunnyvale city officials also lamented the loss of one of Sunnyvale’s most iconic businesses, saying that the demise of the fruit stand is not only emblematic of the slow death of the retail industry, but the transformation of Sunnyvale’s roots.

“It’s people who have that kind of commitment to something that keeps Sunnyvale a community rather than a city where a bunch of people live,” Councilman Jim Griffith said.

Olson — who is partial to wearing all things cherry related, from blouses to necklaces, shoes and socks —  was near tears throughout the day, especially as longtime customers heard the news. Many gave her hugs next to the baskets of imported cherries from Washington she sells in the off season.

Olson doesn’t know what will become of the fruit stand itself, or the water tower next to it, which was moved and rebuilt in 2000. But she knows she will stay connected to the fruit business, she said. “Cherries are in my blood.”

Sunnyvale: Landmark C.J. Olson’s Cherries fruit stand to close Sept. 30