Business
Pistachio ranching: A family tradition
■ A retired Minnesota urologist leverages a long family history of pistachio farming into his own venture.
By Tyler Chin — Posted July 17, 2006
Making sidelines pay
Doctors who branched out beyond running their practice tell why they did it, how they did it, and what you should know before you do it.
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Name: Ahmad Orandi, MD
Specialty: Urology
Location: Hopkins, Minn.
Business: A & R Pistachios of California (link)
The company sells premium pistachios grown on a farm in Terra Bella, Calif., about 50 miles south of Fresno. The company operates a shop in Hopkins, Minn., run by Dr. Orandi's daughter.
Annual revenue: Annual profits fluctuate from $125,000 to $250,000.
Why he started the business: While living and practicing in Fergus Falls, Minn., Dr. Orandi and his wife went to California in 1969 to look at buying land, which led his wife to ask why he wanted to buy property so far away.
"I didn't know what to say," said Dr. Orandi, who came from a family that has grown pistachios in Iran for generations. "I said, 'Well, maybe someday we can grow pistachios,' and then Fortune magazine published an article right around that time where the lead article or feature article was about gold growing on trees. And it was a pistachio tree on the cover."
At that time there wasn't much pistachio farming in the United States, but Dr. Orandi thought that the market here had potential. "It was going to explode, and naturally we had background, knowledge, experience and [pistachio] connections, of course back, [in Iran]," he said. "So, that's the way it started."
He bought his first parcel of land in 1971, naming the business after his and his wife's Ruth's first initials.
Why he stopped practicing: Dr. Orandi retired at the age of 59 in 1991. "Physicians who kept practicing like me at that age ... didn't make it to age 65," he said. "It was obvious that the red light on the dashboard had gone on, and I didn't want to ignore it."
Words of wisdom: "I've been in the stock market, I've been in real estate, and I've been in pistachio farming," he said. "So, if I were to give advice to a young physician who can save [money] and put it into an investment, I'd say go into residential real estate ... But my wife's and my motto is we're in pistachio farming because we have fun, not because we're making money."
