Kiwifruit industry in New Zealand and Growers, who were calling the berries "melonettes", because the local name for the fruit, "Chinese gooseberry", had political connotations due to the Cold War, and to further distinguish it from real gooseberries, which are prone to a fungus called anthracnose. An American importer, Norman Sondag of San Francisco, complained that "melonettes" was as bad as "Chinese gooseberry" because melons and berries were both subject to high import tariffs, and instead asked for a short Maori name that quickly connoted New Zealand. In June 1959, during a meeting of Turners and Growers management in Auckland, Jack Turner suggested the name
Gooseberry Patch 5 to 7 times weekly; 134,000 followers on Pinterest with pins repined over 5,000 times per month ; nearly 1.3M reads on their Scribd page , and nearly 350,000 current email subscribers - communicating weekly. Their first Apple App was made available in early 2011 to allow users to stay connected. To satisfy the growing customer demand, Gooseberry Patch is expanding the availability of their cookbooks through multiple channel partners. A few of these partners include National Book Network, Notions Marketing Corporation and Send The Light Distribution. In order to focus on cookbook publishing and reduce any potential channel conflict