Women's History Month Tomato Queen Tillie Lewis

The Tomato Queen, Tillie of the Valley, The First Lady of the Larder, The Duchess of Diet – were nicknames that newspapers and magazines such as Time, Life and National Geographic had given Tillie Lewis by the time her career reached its pinnacle. She was an exemplary businesswoman who made history in the 1930s during the Great Depression. She fundamentally changed the culture of food processing with her company Flotill Products, later Tillie Lewis Foods, right here in Stockton.

Tillie was born Myrtle Ehrlich in a Brooklyn tenement. She changed her name, calling herself Tillie – a peppier version of Myrtle which better suited her drive and ambition. She lost her mother at a young age and reportedly disliked her stepmother so much that she dropped out of high school and got married at age 16. She had worked at various jobs since the age of 12 and now as Tillie Weisberg she worked as a clerk in her husband’s grocery store.

Their grocery store sold canned goods and the Italian canned tomatoes were a popular item. The Italian tomatoes—pomodoro or what we now know as the Roma tomato, at that time were not grown anywhere in the United States and Tillie was sure they would be prized for their use in sauces. 

In 1930, the government had signed a Tariff Act which increased duties to include agricultural products. The new higher prices on Italian canned tomatoes gave Tillie an idea. Sensing an opportunity, she wondered if the pomodoro tomato could be grown and canned in the US? Experts at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden apparently told her no. She later claimed to have done the research on soil and climate conditions late at night in the New York Public Library. Her hunch that Italian Americans, and later, all Americans would come to prefer this tomato variety for sauce, and that tomato sauce would become thoroughly American in the process, would prove correct.

She made a plan to visit Italy’s largest canning operation – Del Gaizo, Santarsiero & Company, founded in Naples in 1880. The lasting legacy of her trip to Naples was the fact that she convinced the company owners there to take a bet on a tomato cannery in California and returned with a loan of $10,000 to launch the company. FLOTILL, Flo for Florindo, and till for Tillie, as this new company was named, was operated as a subsidiary of Del Gaizo with Florindo as President and Tillie as Secretary-Treasurer. They brought in a team of Italians to install and operate the cannery equipment. Flotill opened in 1935.



FLOTILL Cannery line, 1935 

By the time Florindo died in 1937, Tillie strengthened her hold on the company by borrowing more money to buy out the Italians and purchasing the Pacific Can Company, making her at 36 the sole manager and owner of Flotill. By the time the US entered WWII in 1941 all imports had been blocked; San Joaquin County had become the top tomato producer in the country; and the time was ripe for the local tomato industry to take off. The war years provided both obstacles and opportunities for Tillie. The success of the canned pomodoros had led to other products: she had begun to can and market salad tomatoes, spaghetti, tomato paste, and concentrated juice. These products were successful – they company even supplied C-rations, to the United States Army. But Flotill, like factories around the country experienced serious labor shortages.

With characteristic ingenuity, Tillie began a bus shuttle service to bring employees from downtown to the plant out on Navy Drive south of the Port. In a move as much pragmatic as it was altruistic, she realized that female workers needed childcare, so she started one on site. (However, women were still paid less than men, making only 40 cents per hour, to their earnings of 52 cents per hour.) Labor shortages were most acute during packing season March to November, at its peak Flotill employed 3500 workers, compared to 250 off season. The shortages were felt not only in the factory, but also in the fields because Japanese farmworkers had been sent to detainment camps.

The US and Mexican governments introduced a program to import Mexican labor to work the fields. The Bracero program began with the Stockton sugar beet harvest; over four million workers would participate in the program between 1942 and 1964. Tillie received praise from local farmers for her efforts to help bring the workers here. To further induce workers to stay with her, she introduced a program of employee benefits, establishing a “guaranteed retirement income and insurance plan for senior employees.” After the war Tillie expanded yet again, and by 1947 she was operating three plants making her the largest independent food processor west of the Mississippi. In 1951 Flotill Products earned $30 million, making it one of the 5 largest canning companies in the country, and the only one run by a woman. Tillie is named Businesswoman of the Year by the Associated Press.

She again supplied C-rations to the military for troops in the Korean War. And embarked on a new product line of what would become a national obsession – dieting. The Tasti-Diet “Sweet to the taste, but kind to the waist” – consisted of salad dressing, condiments, fruits, vegetables, soups and desserts - all based on saccharine and the marketing campaign that aimed to equate slimness with health, vitality, success and subliminally, lovability. The Tasti-Diet was marketed to health professionals; ads portrayed Tillie working in what looked like a science lab (which was actually staff food chemist Claire A. Weast’s kitchen in Manteca) to promote the idea of science based advice. Whirlwind tours, magazine ads, and television appearances brought this chapter of Tillie Lewis’ life to the national stage. In 1954 she introduced diet soft drinks – ginger ale, cola, root beer, lemon-lime, black cherry and raspberry. 

Tillie's first promotion for Tasti-Diet, 1952 

In 1961 the company went public after changing its name to Tillie Lewis Foods. It was the largest packer of peeled canned tomatoes in the country with half a dozen brands and private labeling for supermarkets: A&P, Safeway, Kroger and Acme. However, by the late 1960s advances in mechanized farming had changed the field again. In 1966 Tillie Lewis Foods was sold to Ogden, a manufacturing powerhouse who wanted to expand into food production, for 16 million dollars. Tillie continued to run the business, but by 1971 when she retired profits had sunk. Ogden purchased the Progresso Company for 70 million dollars in 1979, and it in turn was sold to IC Industries in 1986 for 320 million. In 1987 the original Flotill cannery was closed; and Progresso, Hain, and other IC brands became part of Pet, Inc. Tillie didn’t live to see her beloved company sold and eventually closed.

As for the tomato packing industry which she pioneered, by 1987 only 19 canneries were left in California from the 40 operated in the 60s. Timing, luck, hard work, smarts and strategic partnerships made Tillie Lewis our homegrown Tomato Queen. Longtime company secretary Alilea Haywood said “She used to call the business her ‘baby’ and she treated all the employees as members of her ‘family.’ She was the matriarch – sometimes benevolent, sometimes exacting, but always with a goal of strengthening the company and making things better for her Flotill Family.”