Japanese Gardener Offers Vegetables for French Connoisseurs

Few people think of gardening as a business. Farming, maybe… but gardening? In fact, one gardener has managed to turn his love of gardening into a success small business by differentiating his company from the many competitors in his area.

Asafuni Yamashita is what many would call a celebrity gardener. His greenhouses supply the world’s most renowned chefs, with unique vegetables shipped all over the United States and even to France. His vegetables are renowned for their flavor and unique features.

Like many small business owners, Yamashita’s path to small business success was long and filled with detours. Japanese-born and French-educated, he returned to Tokyo to begin an import-export business, but found that it didn’t tickle his green thumb. He returned to France and began selling bonsai trees. These were popular in Paris at the time, leading to a lucrative business not just selling the plants, but renting them to other businesses. A restaurant chef who rented Yamashita’s trees suggested that he begin growing Japanese vegetables, which were not widely available in the area.

With just $500 worth of seeds, Yamashita began selling to twelve area restaurants. However, he was not happy to stop there. The small business owner wondered what a world class chef could do with the intensely flavored produce. A big break arrived when a friend offered to introduce him to well know n gourmet chef Christian Le Squer, head of a Michelin three star restaurant in Paris. Yamashita came to the meeting prepared, with a basket of his unique vegetables. Le Squer gave him the account on the spot.

Word of mouth soon spread about this new choice in vegetables. After just a few years, the gardener turned small business owner had seven accounts and grossed $150,000 a year, which is astounding for a single gardener with just an acre of greenhouses. Although Yamashita is ambivalent about expanding further, he definitely has the option with a long waiting list of fashionable gourmet restaurants.

Small and sweet is such a huge part of the brand that Yamashita may be wise to keep his operations at his current level. Yamashita currently is involved in every step of the growing process and has no employees, except for occasional help from his wife. He visits Japan annually to choose the next crop’s seeds. Right now, his most in demand product is a blueberry sized micro-tomato, which pulls in an astounding forty dollars per pound.

Yamashita is also solely responsible for the nongardening aspects of his business. He delivers orders himself and advises chefs on traditional methods for preparing the produce. This small business owner with no restaurant experience often finds himself in the odd position of advising some of the world’s best known chefs.

This is a great example of profit differentiation. Yamashita’s produce is different from anything else on the market, and he is the first one to point that out. No one will pay forty dollars a pound for just any vegetable, so his success in the gourmet market proves how different his produce really is.