that's when two brothers, arthur and henry bell, decided to buy a small olive grove near fresno. they even carried on harvesting and selling olives through the great depression. no one realized it back then, but the brothers were planting the seeds for a multi-million-dollar business lasting at least 4 generations. >> just to give you an example, bell-carter's first canning operation was in berkeley, california in 1930. the company had 12 employees, and i think their annual--annually they canned about 7,000 cases of olives. come up to today's standards. we have over 500 employees canning well over 9 million cases a year. >> at the heart of the business is the fruit, arriving at the processing plant within 24 hours of beng picked so the olives can be sized and sortd. although the olives are initially green and bitter, they're soaked for days in these special contairs, and mixed with lye and carbon dioxide to turn theinto those familiar california black olives. >> they can tree ripen, but for the nice, firm, black, ripe california olive, we want the greenest, firmest olive we can g