John Bonner focuses on purposeful progress as founder of Great Lakes Growers

Ohio-based Great Lakes Growers operates advanced technology throughout its 2½-acre greenhouse range, but founder John Bonner follows a people-first philosophy.

Growing some 7 million units of lettuce and herbs annually for both retail and food service certainly takes precision growing techniques and the required supporting technology. But it’s the people who make up Bonner’s executive team and crew that he values the most.

At his right hand is Renato Zardo, production director and part-owner, who emigrated from Brazil. Before Bonner recruited him to Great Lakes Growers, Zardo worked for floriculture and CEA firms, as well as for Koppert US, a biological control company. It was Zardo’s role as a salesman at Koppert that first brought him to Bonner’s office.

“He got my attention right away because he told me he could save me money by not using any chemical pesticides,” Bonner recalls. “After working with him on the biologicals and seeing really strong results, he started helping me manage the greenhouse environment with our Priva system. And I saw these massive increases in the productivity of the facilities based on his recommendations and said, ‘What’s it going to take to get you to work for me full time?’ We share a passion and philosophy for growing quality, and I give him credit for making Great Lakes Growers a better company today than when he first walked through the door.”

Bonner also recruited Zardo’s wife, Danielle Ferreira, who is the director of operations and handles all the facility’s food safety processes and much of the company’s human resources management.

Bonner’s two longest-serving employees are general manager Kevin Bell and director of administration Alicia Lillibridge are seasoned veterans who communicate extremely well and run a smooth operation, Bonner says.

“We have an exceptional group of people.”

Fresh in 24 hours

Great Lakes Growers produces 10 varieties of lettuce and 14 herbs year-round for a total of 70 SKUs. Sales are split nearly 50-50 between retail and food service. Products, which are sold regionally throughout the Midwest and Canada, include the Great Lakes Growers-branded and private-label items. Great Lakes ships throughout its home state of Ohio and into Michigan, Indiana, western New York, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky and northern West Virginia.

“The local appeal and freshness aspect is what we’re after,” Bonner says. “We focus on the ability to deliver product no more than 24 hours after harvest. That means if we’re selling to a food service supply company, we’re typically going there three to five times per week. We don’t believe in harvesting product and then putting it in a cooler until we find a home for it.”

One of Bonner’s primary roles is calculating sales projections and working closely with the customer to understand their needs. He’s continually asking what’s trending up or down.

“We’re managing the production schedules about two months ahead of time to have product ready for customers when they need it. We’re constantly tweaking production schedules — adjusting up or down as needed, although typically it’s up. Freshness is what we stand on. It’s what we deliver,” Bonner adds. “Once product is harvested, it’s either delivered that same day or by early the next morning. And that freshness is what resonates with customers, whether it’s a consumer at a grocery store or a chef at a hotel. When they open up the product, there’s still several days of freshness left in it. We can’t ship to California, for instance, and make that claim. So, it all meshes into our regional distribution pattern.”

Everything is done in-house at Great Lakes Growers, from sowing seed to packaging. And the production of 70 SKUs is divided nearly evenly between lettuce and herbs. The production system has to be flexible to accommodate that many SKUs, Bonner explains.

“Some customers may have 20 or more of our items in in their store. That’s where our flexibility really helps. We can take a head of lettuce, say a Batavia type, and we can pack that a few different ways,” he says. “We can cut it and pack it as a leaf lettuce, sell it as a whole head or blend it with other varieties.”

Bonner says the company maintains a core group of varieties and has developed creative ways to package it for different market segments.

“A clam shell with a top seal is our retail pack, and we can take any of those same lettuce types and cut them into 1- or 3-pound bags for bulk sales to the food service segment,” he says. “We do the same things with herbs. We focus on taking a variety and packaging and selling it in many different ways to supply the market.”

Building out the technology

Bonner, who studied finance and economics in college, grew up immersed in the floriculture industry. His grandfather, John Gander, founded BFG Supply. His parents started Dillen Products, which is now part of The HC Companies. His sister founded Eagle Creek Growers, an ornamental greenhouse where Bonner worked for several years. In 2012, he traded flowers for lettuce and started small with a miniscule 300-square-foot double-poly greenhouse, where he was a one-man show.

“I built my own production system based on what I saw in Dutch greenhouses, and I quickly sold out of all the butter lettuce I grew,” he recalls. “So, I rented a greenhouse that was originally a retail garden center and converted it into lettuce production. I worked closely with Prins USA and Joe Van Wingerden to further develop the production technique and the automated system we have in place today.”

Bonner says he’s taken advantage of “all the great innovations and technology” through the years, such as diffused glass, energy curtains, automated environmental controls and LED lights. He was an early LED adopter and currently uses Signify LEDs.

“We’ve had a great partnership with them through the years, and the first time we tried LEDs was about a year or two after I built the first upgraded, high-tech facility,” he says. “We’ve been using LEDs for about 10 years now. Their reps walked into my office and said LEDs would save me 35% on my energy bill. They also said the lettuce would taste better and the color would be better.”

He was skeptical but built a 3,000-square-foot trial space to test LEDs against high-pressure sodium lights.

“We went into the trial trying to validate the energy savings with separate meters in the space. We understood the consumption per square foot and found the LEDs did save energy, which was the goal,” he recalls. “But what we also found was that the plant color really was better. The physiological stress on the plant was lower because of the lower radiation levels from the bulb. The texture was better, and the flavor was better.”

LEDs have also created production consistency, he adds.

“In the years before LEDs, we would lose 30%, maybe 40%, production capacity in the months of December, January and February. Now we may dip 5% to 8%,” he notes. “That’s critical, because to keep a customer happy, you can’t short purchase orders. And when you get a PO in December and it’s just as big as the one in June, you’ve got to fill it. And I think having consistent supply is probably the biggest benefit of LEDs. Because we were quick to adopt that technology, we grabbed a lot of market share.”

The dependability of hydroponics

Great Lakes grows all its products hydroponically. Bonner chose hydroponics for the production consistency it affords. But it took years to get to that point, learning from past mistakes and making adjustments.

“Where we are today, we start with this baseline bottle-quality water in the greenhouse. It wasn’t always like that. When we first started, we were dealing with clogs from particulates. So, we built a mechanical filtration system. Then we saw a risk of things like pythium, so we switched to an ozone system, which allowed us to meet stringent water quality expectations from our customers,” he explains. “We installed a reverse osmosis system, then we adopted some nanobubble technology, which helps the crop by raising the dissolved oxygen. These aren’t off-the-shelf systems. We’ve got some really good vendor partners like Zwart Systems and Dramm that help us grow consistently and safely. And our Priva environmental control system is really robust, too.”

Bonner also chose hydroponic production to keep a tight rein on food safety.

“Safety is priority, of course. It’s imperative to have a robust sanitation system and eliminate the risk of dangers like listeria or E. coli,” he says. “We voluntarily use a third-party auditing company, and we are audited annually. And we’ve never scored below 95%, which is what we scored the first and second year. Since then, we’ve maintained a score of 100%. We also have some large customers who have their own quality control departments that do their own food safety testing. We follow those protocols, too. Between our own audits and our customers tests, we go above and beyond what’s expected by entities like USDA or a health department.”

Food safety training starts with stringent standard operating procedures that are not only in a manual but reinforced with video training. It’s not one and done — the training is continual, Bonner says.

“There’s constant and consistent training and retraining when it comes to food safety. And we explain why we do it. When people understand the ‘why,’ they own it better and are more prideful in what they’re doing,” he adds.

Eyes on the crop

When it’s time to vet new technology, such as pairing photography with AI to monitor crops, Bonner often relies on Zardo’s instincts and knowledge. Zardo is trialing a system that uses cameras to read the photosynthesis of the plants.

“Some of the things we’ve already learned is fantastic,” Zardo says. “One of the things l like most about this system is it can tell me the photosynthesis accumulation activity of the plant. For instance, I’ve observed through the camera that I can adjust transplant time based on photosynthesis intensity. I’ve also been able to determine when to increase the spacing, like a day or two earlier, to get more photosynthesis.”

Zardo adds that the system has allowed him to see what was once a lighting blind spot.

“My biggest question has always been, ‘What is my optimum — not maximum — but optimum light level for lettuce?’ But I didn’t have the answer,” he says. “Even the best grower I’ve ever met didn’t have that answer. With this technology, the camera can tell me at what light level the growth will plateau and when the plant is getting stressed from too much light. At that point, they start closing the stomata and start reducing transpiration, which stops the growth.”

Zardo also quantified something he’d previously learned — plants experience peak photosynthesis early in the morning and drops by midday. He also learned when artificial lighting wasn’t needed because of what the camera was revealing.

Currently, there’s enough infrastructure at Great Lakes Growers to support 10 acres of production.

“We’re ready. Everything’s in place,” Bonner says. “My motto is we don’t expand unless our customers demand it. But we’re on this nice growth curve, and we’re maintaining it.”

In a CEA market experiencing growing pains, Bonner can lean on his economics acumen and the knowledge of growing systems he’s obtained over his career — along with the help of Zardo and the rest of his executive team — to continue purposeful progress. With the current volatility in the CEA market, Bonner says companies that invest in both people and technology will likely succeed.

“And you’ve got to be a grower first. You’ve got to be extremely conscientious and understand plants,” he says. “Part of what’s going on in the marketplace is some companies are lacking true accountability for the business and focusing more on technology rather than focusing on how to grow a good plant and be a good grower. Because of that, consolidation will continue. But the market is seeing the cream rise to the top and seeing people succeed who know what it takes to be a good grower. I like to include us in that category.”

This article appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Produce Grower magazine as the cover story under the headline "Purposeful progress."

Kelli Rodda is editorial director of Produce Grower magazine. Contact her at krodda@gie.net.