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You order a drink, and when the flight attendant brings it, you also get a bag of salted almonds. You've just participated in one of the all-time great marketing schemes. Its architect is a tall, chubby, ever smiling salesman with a surname that will never starve for want of vowels - Roger Baccigaluppi... but in a nutshell, the secret of the exchange's success is marketing.

USA Today

 
Blue Diamond ... has been so successful getting folks here and abroad to gobble more nuts that it sold 70% of the world's almonds last year. Having conquered West Germany, Baccigaluppi marched on Russia, Blue Diamond's second largest foreign market. Consumption of California almonds grew 300% in 1985 to 45 million pounds, and sales should nearly double by year end.

Forbes

 
Almonds were a favorite of King Tutankhamen of Egypt in the 14th century B.C. and were brought to California by Spanish missionaries. But only in this decade, as the cooperative... stepped up their sales efforts have the nuts really come out of their shells.

New York Times

 
...Baccigaluppi has been called on more than a few times to trouble shoot by playing political hardball. India was a glowing example.

Sacramento Union

 
...employee productivity, measured by product shipped per worker, has increased 24 percent in the last four years..., Baccigaluppi and Blue Diamond have received much of the credit for the approximate doubling of U.S. almond consumption in the last 10 years.

Sacramento Bee

 
Rust-belt manufacturers could profit from the experience of these down-home farmers...the success with almonds is "almost a model for other commodities," says Kirby Moulton, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Berkeley

U.S. News & World Report

 
When Baccigaluppi speaks about foreign trade, or the value of the dollar, he speaks with authority.

Sacramento Bee