The Beylik Family Legacy

Scott Beylik is describing his greenhouse at Beylik Family Farms in Fillmore, and I’m trying to wrap my head around what he has just told me about his tomato plants. Their roots, he explains, are connected to coconut husks (coco coir) rather than soil. It’s all part of a hydroponic system so meticulously controlled that the plants are, to use his words, “on life support.” It conjures a visual straight out of The Matrix—only this time the tomatoes being grown are still a power source for humans, not machines.

Scott can monitor every aspect of his operation from software on his phone, from water delivery to nutrient levels. Sensors track sunlight intensity and automatically adjust irrigation accordingly. When I ask if this means he’s the rare farmer who can take a vacation without worrying, he laughs.

“It’s quite the opposite,” he says. “In a hydroponic system, when something fails, it’s time-critical to fix it before it all goes completely wrong.”

For all the high-tech infrastructure, the Beyliks have stuck to their original, low-tech business model: selling everything they grow at farmers’ markets, directly to consumers and, more recently, to restaurants. Scott remembers being at the first farmers’ market in downtown Ventura on a Saturday in 1987, back when he was still in high school, and the market was a project of Future Farmers of America (FFA). Nearly four decades later, that face-to-face connection is still the heart of the operation.

“We have customers where we’ve known them for generations,” Scott says. “The kids now have kids who shop with us.”

Scott’s wife and co-owner, Laura, runs the farmers’ market side of the business, and their division of labor is complementary. “Right now, we’re deciding how much of each variety of tomato to grow,” Scott says. “Her firsthand experience at the farmers’ market really drives that because she has to deal directly with customers if we run out of what they want.”

The farm’s staples are hydroponically grown Big Beef, San Marzano (a plum tomato) and low-acid yellow and Japanese pink varieties, along with no-peel, seedless Persian cucumbers.

Laura’s involvement goes beyond market days. She serves as the president of the Ventura County Certified Farmers’ Market Association and treasurer of the Santa Barbara association. All this is a side gig to her “real” job as an ER nurse, which may tell you something about the stamina it requires to be in farming these days.

Scott and Laura do have help: about a dozen year-round employees, plus seasonal workers. Their foreman, Refugio Arambula, has been with them since Scott was 14. Scott’s father, who founded the business with his father, retired 15 years ago, but one other family member remains involved: Scott and Laura’s daughter, Samantha, helps with markets and prepping restaurant orders.

The farmers’ markets they serve stretch from Santa Barbara to Santa Monica. Restaurants like Jon & Vinny’s, Little Dom’s and Condor Bar buy from Beylik. Next time you eat at Dang Burger in Carpinteria, that’s probably a Beylik beefsteak in your bun. Or maybe last summer you tasted an Ancho chili from Beylik at Pinyon in Ojai or Ventura.

Chilis are an example of how Scott has innovated the farm since his father’s era, adding seasonal row crops like peppers and squash, along with avocados. Besides the obvious benefit of complementing tomatoes at market stands, these crops avoid the regulatory hurdles and associated expense of adding more greenhouse space. The economics of small-scale farming in California constantly command Scott’s attention, with everything coming down to one question: “Does it pencil?” It’s a phrase he uses often when discussing the viability of any farming decision, from crop selection to renewable energy investments.

Take solar power. It may seem like a natural fit for a resource-efficient hydroponic operation, but Scott explains the challenge: solar panels block the very sunlight his tomatoes need. Beyond that, he explained that government incentives for solar favor consumers, not farms. After labor, electricity is his biggest cost—not just in the greenhouse but for pumping groundwater outside. Like the greenhouse, those outdoor irrigation systems use sensors to manage water precisely.

Scott’s approach to innovation when it comes to tomato varieties is different than how he grows them. There, the challenge isn’t about finding new cultivars—it’s about resisting the pressure to grow them.

“The tastiest varieties are the old ones,” he tells me. “Newer ones have been bred for transport and shelf life. You can bounce some like a ball.” Beylik tomatoes, by contrast, reach consumers within days of being picked.

But being a grower of excellent tomatoes has its downsides. “I pick tomatoes out of salads when I go out to eat,” Scott admits. And he cannot abide a grocery-store tomato. After all, his are the kind of tomatoes that chefs pre-order by the case, the kind that ruin you for anything else.

For those tempted by this kind of ruin, Scott’s advice on hydroponic farming is to start small. Go to farmers’ markets and gauge demand. “You get direct consumer feedback, you can specialize in a niche and you charge consumer prices, cutting out the wholesale middleman.”

And so, we return to the inevitable question for Beylik Family Farms: Does it pencil? Talking numbers would have been gauche, but the real measure of success might be simpler: generations of families who keep coming back for their produce.