In Manhattan's elegant St. Regis Hotel last week, a waiter carried two tomatoes on a tray into the suite of Mrs. Tillie Lewis of Stockton, Calif. She was aghast at the bill ($1). "You tell Vincent Astor,"* said Mrs. Lewis as she signed the check, "that these tomatoes cost him no more than 5¢ apiece, that's 1,000% profit." Said the waiter: "I guess you know your tomatoes."
The waiter didn't know it, but he was indulging in an understatement. In her late 40s, Brooklyn-born Tillie Lewis likes to say she is the world's tomato queen and one of the nation's largest independent canners of fruits & vegetables. She began her Manhattan holiday last week as the 1951 packing season ended. At its close, her Flotill Products, Inc. had turned out 150 million cans, including some 75 million cans of tomatoes and tomato products. This year, she estimates she will net some $1,300,000 after taxes, on $20 million in sales.
A Lot of Tomatoes. At the age of 15, Tillie, who was born Myrtle Ehrlich, was married to a Brooklyn wholesale grocer who imported the firm-bodied, pear-shaped Italian tomatoes which make the best spaghetti sauce. She later divorced the grocer, but she remembered the tomatoes, even when she went to work selling securities in Wall Street. In 1934, when a tariff sent the price of Italian tomatoes skyrocketing, Tillie began to think of growing them in the U.S. Everybody told her it was impossible ("the soil isn't right"). But on a trip to Italy, she got seed and talked an Italian importer into staking $50,000 on a project to grow them in California. There, she persuaded farmers to undertake the experiment. It succeeded; pear-shaped tomatoes now make up about 10% of California's crop. To can the tomatoes, Tillie talked Pacific Can Co. into building a small plant at Stockton, with an option for her to buy. In 1935, her first year, she lost $1,000 but paid all bills. She proved her resourcefulness; once, when the boilers failed, she got a railroad to move in a locomotive, used its steam to complete the canning before the tomatoes spoiled. She designed a conveyor-belt feeder which is now used by other canners.
In 1937, when Flotill was beginning to show profits, Tillie's backer died. She borrowed more than $100,000 to buy out his interest, paid it back from earnings in ten months. As sole owner, Tillie added spinach and asparagus to her line, and built new plants. When an organizing strike threatened in 1940, A.F.L. Organizer Meyer Lewis sat down with Tillie, settled the problems in an hour. Impressed with Lewis, Tillie hired him as general manager, seven years later married him.
The Feminine Touch. Tillie has learned every trick of the canning trade, and played them all to the hilt. Her methods have not always endeared her to other canners. Like almost every other canner, Tillie Lewis lost money in 1948 & '49 (reason: high-cost inventories and overproduction). She squeaked through only by wangling two RFC loans for a total of $1,600,000 (has paid off all but about $600,000). Tillie chose this poor time to launch another venture—a Texas company to import and can Mexican pineapples. Tex-Mex went bust, and Tillie says she lost $600,000 on the deal. But Flotill kept on growing.