Michigan couple turns cherry pits into profitable businesses

Published 2:00 pm Monday, July 20, 2015

KINGSLEY, Mich. — When enjoying a bowl of fresh cherries, one of the most bothersome downsides can be having to eat around and later discard the pits. For one Michigan couple, the pits of delicious cherries have gone from being a pain to a prime source of profit.

Mounds of cherry pits rest in Joy and Chris Storms’ driveway in their pastoral southern Michigan community.

The pit piles’ peaks reach Chris’ forehead. They have a few inches on Joy’s small frame.

“Cherry pits, for processors, have been a nuisance item for years,” Chris Storms said. “They have millions and millions of pounds of them.”

The Storms now turn some those millions into products that fuel two businesses, The Cherry Pit Store and Fire Pit Pellets. They purchase cherry pits from Michigan fruit processing companies, then wash, dry and process them using “trade secret” techniques.

The finished pits become two products — fuel for pellet stoves and craft supplies used mostly to make hot and cold packs. Both businesses sell out of pits almost every year.

The Storms’ work proves pits are meant for more than spitting contests.

Companies that process fresh cherries into cherry products often have little use for the hard, tan pits inside the fruits.

Doug Plumstead, Graceland Fruit’s Vice President of Supply Chain Management, and Tom Berg, director of marketing for Shoreline Fruit, both said the northern Michigan fruit processing companies end up spreading many pits on the ground. The process is a means of disposing of the pits — it doesn’t provide any agricultural benefits.

Chris Storms said some cherry processors buried pits or dumped them in the area’s Grand Traverse Bay in the past. He’s happy to give pits a second life.

“Pits were a nuisance item for them,” he said. “We came along with this idea of perhaps starting a business and utilizing that waste product. We approached them with the idea that if we’re going to make a long-term business out of this we need to have the product available to us.”

That’s one of the downsides of the business: the Storms rely on the cherry crop. Bad weather, disease or pests that hurt production hurt their businesses, too.

“We live in the cherry capital of the world, and that’s a plus, but there are only so many cherry trees, there are only so many cherries,” Chris Storms said. “We’re limited as far as how much product we have.”

The Storms started Fire Pit Pellets in the early 1990s when one of Chris’ friends began heating his workshop with cherry pits and Joy’s mother started heating with a pellet stove.

That’s when the idea sparked and the couple developed Fire Pit Pellets. They sell the fuel through the Michigan-based Family Farm and Home chain, and previously worked with national retailers Tractor Supply Company and Blain’s Farm & Fleet.

Cherry pits can be used in almost all pellet stoves, Chris Storms said, and they burn hotter and cleaner than wood pellets.

Joy Storms developed the craft side business, The Cherry Pit Store, after a medical supply company in New York purchased pits to use in hot and cold packs for injuries and sore muscles. She then decided to start making her own.

The craft business grows every year as companies purchase pits to make their own products, and home-maker gurus including Martha Stewart teach people to make cherry pit crafts.

The Storms are nearing the end of their slow season. The couple’s current pit pile is still small compared to the one that collects after the trees are plucked clean and cherries are processed. Their driveway will soon be piled with multiple semi-truck loads of cherry pits. They’ll then start washing, drying and processing the pits for fuel and crafts.

“The cherry pit business has been good for the past 20 years and I don’t foresee it’s going to be any different in the next 20,” Chris Storms said.

Thompson writes for the Traverse City (Michigan) Record-Eagle.