Thomas Zaninovich

4th Generation Owner Operator; Production Manager and Representative – Casa Cristal Nursery (2024–2026), Production and Field Operations Supervisor – Sunview Vineyards of California (2021–2024)

Brand and Business Development

• Stewarded brand equity for proprietary grape breeders using market pricing analysis to communicate premium value propositions to clients across California and Mexico, maintaining strong client retention.
• Leveraged market trend analysis to develop a key account strategy for a major wine grape customer, cultivating relationships with regional managers to secure a major wine grape planting in 2025 and establish a top revenue account.
• Owned the relationship with a proprietary Spanish breeding program, leading partnership development through market feedback reporting to solidify position as California’s only operation carrying all major breeding programs.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Led a cross-functional initiative across sales, facility, and field operations to execute a facility expansion, directly supporting the company’s long-term production scaling strategy.
• Owned an operational budget covering equipment, materials, and water allotments, coordinating shared resources across divisions and mediating competing priorities to deliver on-schedule seasonal production targets.

Operations

• Conducted formal CAPEX analysis comparing equipment costs to labor savings to secure leadership buy-in for automated precision cutting equipment, reducing operating costs and supporting production scale-up.
• Managed facility operations, overseeing schedules, budgets, and KPI tracking to scale daily output using innovative equipment in support of company-wide expansion goals.
• Authored SOPs and trained crews by developing and validating a quality control protocol through a production trial, institutionalizing an improvement in product viability as standard practice.
• Coordinated inbound and outbound logistics, tracking cost, yield, and SKU data and leading safety training to ensure consistent handoff of daily product value.

Operations Intern

• Delivered operational analysis across an assigned production line, identifying quality variances by source and summarizing cost and productivity data to support workflow planning and order fulfillment decisions.
• Coordinated and fulfilled orders by executing end-to-end warehouse picking processes, grading commodities against Safe Quality Food compliance standards to ensure accurate and timely delivery of daily product value.

• Awards: Departmental Citation for Academic Achievement
• Leadership: Theta Omega Chapter President – Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity