MONTE VISTA, CO – This week, a match made in potato heaven hit the produce industry with Farm Fresh Direct and Cal-Ore Produce announcing a new partnership. The two are joining forces to continue to increase their organic and conventional programs and service the U.S. with cost-effective, one-stop shopping solutions.
“We have had a strong business relationship with Cal-Ore, but we’re formalizing that partnership with their joining our grower-owned organization,” said Jamey Higham, Pesident and CEO of Farm Fresh Direct, in a press release that also detailed Farm Fresh’s new role as the exclusive sales and marketing agent for Cal-Ore. “Cal-Ore has a rich history in the potato business and have always been recognized for their quality, attention to the environment, and their commitment to growing conventional and organic potatoes. Their core values and customer focus make them a perfect addition to the Farm Fresh Direct family of farms, and we are excited to have them join our organization!”
One of the founding members of Cal-Ore Produce is Staunton Farms LP, which began growing potatoes in 1934.
“We are excited about joining the Farm Fresh Direct organization; they have an excellent group of grower owners who share our passion for farming and have a great customer base,” said Sid Staunton, President of Cal-Ore. “We have always focused on farming, but with the sales and marketing expertise that Farm Fresh Direct brings, it will help ensure our fourth-generation farms continue to thrive for our future generations.”
Congratulations, Farm Fresh Direct and Cal-Ore Produce on the new partnership! For more in the works within the produce industry, stay tuned to AndNowUKnow.
MISSION, TX – Addressing consumer perceptions and motivation factors contributing to our industry that waver between generations is Phil Gwoke, generational expert and consultant at BridgeWorks and keynote speaker for Viva Fresh Expo’s Luncheon on Friday, April 6th at the JW Marriott Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, Texas. Gwoke’s expertise has toured the world, inspiring 100,000 people located throughout 40 different states and four continents.
“This is a relevant topic that we’re introducing in a unique way because we have asked Bridgeworks to develop research on produce purchasing behaviors especially as it relates to health and wellness among diverse generational groups,” said Dante Galeazzi, President and CEO of the Texas International Produce Association, in a recent press release. “Understanding the foundations of generational perceptions about healthy eating habits and nutrition of fruits and vegetables can translate into tangible and lasting success for not only retailers and foodservice professionals, but for marketers, shippers and producers as well.”
Using research, understanding, and actionable insight, BridgeWorks creates ties generational gaps in the marketplace and workplace. Since its 1998 founding, the company has worked with many heavy hitters, including Chick-fil-A, General Mills, Kraft, Land O’Lakes, Walmart, Microsoft, and Disney.
Attendees will walk away with a handout summarizing BridgeWorks’ key findings and additional insights into the produce industry. These findings can influence future merchandising and marketing efforts. Further, Gwoke’s talk will cover the workplace’s generational differences, offering employers insight into how to navigate and bridge gaps with his unique Generation X sense of humor, experiences, research, and generational expertise running through the pulse of every keynote, workshop, and training session he offers.
“I am excited to bring 20 years of generational research to the Viva Fresh Produce Expo that will equip attendees with strategies on marketing produce across the generations more effectively and inspire them with insights as to why these shifts are so impactful,” said Gwoke.
On top of Gwoke’s enlightening contributions to the Luncheon, Viva Fresh’s annual Healthy Living Award will be announced at this event. The award seeks to spotlight those positively influencing and educating consumers on the benefits of healthy nutrition practices, particularly encouraging the consumption of more fruits and vegetables in day-to-day living.
Wanting more details on the event’s happenings? Check out the website: VivaFreshExpo.com.
SALINAS, CA - Forbes Agency Council has welcomed a voice from the marketing aspect of fresh produce, having hand-selected Moxxy Marketing President and CEO Karen Nardozza for part of a curated network of leaders.
"Aligning with the Forbes brand and being published on Forbes.com will provide a valuable opportunity for strategically positioning and building increased awareness of Moxxy," said Karen. "I’m looking forward to sharing my perspective and learning from other council members for the benefit of our agency and our clients."
This invitation-only organization is made up of senior-level executives in public relations, media strategy, creative, and advertising agencies, according to a press release. As a member, Karen noted an opportunity to publish articles and share her expertise, with intentions to use her innovative expertise in marketing for:
- Agriculture
- Fresh food
- Organics
- Wine
- Cannabis
- Ag-services/Ag-tech
Some of the areas in which Nardozza is a recognized authority include marketing planning, brand development, campaign concepting, packaging design, website design, public relations, and social media management.
"At AMI we work with over 250 privately held agencies and Moxxy is one of the superstars. Karen Nardozza and her team bring an incredible blend of agency experience, a deep expertise in their clients’ industries and gusty, arresting strategies to drive results for their clients. When a brand discovers Moxxy, they stop looking," Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute and a fellow member of Forbes Agency Council, said.
Nardozza also intends to capitalize on the council’s "concierge team," which seeks to connect members to industry resources that could help drive better results for their agencies and clients.
"Thought leadership, including publishing articles, blogging, presenting at conferences and tradeshows, podcasting, and sharing case studies, infographics and advice via social media are all marketing tactics Moxxy regularly recommends to our clients and handles skillfully on their behalf," she added. "I’m honored to be joining the Forbes Agency Council and look forward to expanding my knowledge and employing these same tactics to grow our business."
Moxxy was excited to note, with its leader on the team, it will have access to preferred rates with pre-qualified providers in a variety of areas ranging from marketing technology and travel, to insurance and back-office services, benefiting both the company and its clients.
Congratulations to Karen on this prestigious step!
BEIJING, CHINA - Mr. Avocado has landed in Beijing. The premium ripe avocado from Mission Produce and Lantao in China had its first delivery via e-commerce site JD.com’s newly opened brick and mortar supermarket, 7Fresh in Beijing City.
“We wanted to make a strong impression with consumers at 7Fresh, and our full package with recipes, how-to guides, and nutritional information really did the job,” said John Wang, President & CEO of Mr. Avocado, who also noted that first-day of sales were impressive. “We were very pleased with the sales volume and the opportunity to continue to educate the Chinese consumer on all the benefits of the avocado.”
The 4,000-square-meter 7Fresh located near JD’s headquarters in the Yizhuang District of Beijing is a store jam-packed with high-tech amenities, such as smart shopping carts, sensor-activated product information, and integrated online and offline shopping capabilities. According to a press release, the first traditional offline supermarket by JD comes with an increased focus on freshness, high-quality produce, and high levels of service. Mission and Lantao reported that this makes the store a perfect match with the values of the Mr. Avocado brand.
Following the successful launch of Mr. Avocado in Pagoda in 2017, the brand quickly grew to be included in Harbin Zhongyanghong supermarket in the summer, then JD online, and finally online retailer Missfresh in November. Now, entering into the beginning of 2018, Mr. Avocado is rapidly finding more opportunities in the market through various supermarket and online channels.
For its debut at 7Fresh, Mr. Avocado developed customized boxes that were engineered specifically to fit four large avocados and to stand out in the store’s environment. The design features bold color and graphic design, as well as educational materials to demonstrate how to cut an avocado and make seasonal recipes for Chinese New Year.
While the growth of Mr. Avocado seems rapid, there’s even more to come in the future of the brand. Mr. Avocado plans to find additional opportunities to continue its brand development, including through distribution channels that provide opportunities to promote a healthy lifestyle that include avocados in daily Chinese diets. Stay tuned to find out more as Mission Produce and Lantao keep pushing ahead.
ELGIN, MN - Though the apple may be a perennial favorite and a staple of produce departments everywhere, recent shifts in consumer buying habits have highlighted room for new and innovative varieties that can help retailers drive sales and secure repeat purchases. Honeybear Brands has been at the fore of this opportunity, developing and marketing new varieties to court consumers with exceptional taste and texture.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Honeybear Brands’ Vice President of Sales and Marketing Don Roper to find out more about the company’s latest premium variety—Pazazz—and learn more how and why it’s fast becoming a standout on the apple deck.
Q: Tell me a little about the Pazazz apple: How is the apple uniquely suited to today’s apple category?
Don Roper: Pazazz is a unique apple. It’s the star of our busy varietal development program at Honeybear Brands. We’ve grown, refined, and perfected it over ten years, and the result is an apple variety that really introduces customers and retailers to a new level of flavor, if you will. Pazazz as a variety also provides incredible, really unrivaled, storage qualities, meaning when it reaches store shelves in the early winter months, unlike other varieties, it’s bursting with a perfect balance of sweet and tart flavors and a second-to-none, just-picked crunch. What that means is a variety that guarantees retailers and their customers a high-crunch, high-flavor “wow” experience in every bite—at a time of year when this is almost impossible to find in any other apple on the deck.
Pazazz is a winner with consumers, but with retailers too. Industry models show the ever-popular Honeycrisp variety is slowing in sales and will plateau in the next few years. That’s going to dramatically impact volume sales and erode profit margins for retailers. But we’re finding our retail partners who are already introducing Pazazz to their premium-variety customers are reaping incremental sales and arming themselves with a truly distinct variety that will help to differentiate their apple offering and drive long-term sustainable sales revenue.
Q: Can you tell me a little about the feedback Honeybear Brands is hearing from its customers? How is Pazazz performing in store? What has feedback been like thus far?
DR: We work closely with our retail buyers across North America, soliciting their on-the-ground feedback so we can continue to provide best in class support to them. This was particularly critical this season, as we introduced Pazazz two months early before the holidays into a market where the consumer is distracted and has a lot of competition for their dollar. What we heard universally—and what we’re learning from Q4 numbers, across the board—is that Pazazz is a sales driver for the retailer, and we’re seeing customers asking for the variety by name from coast to coast. Demand has been incredibly high, sales brisk, and we smashed our retail projections before we even began our typical marketing and promotion programs after the New Year this January. That’s very encouraging as the Pazazz crop volume grows exponentially and we begin to position for truly universal availability across North America late this year and into 2019.
Q: How can retailers best capitalize on the possibilities Pazazz offers? What can retailers expect in the way of repeat purchases?
DR: Our retailers are telling us they’re looking for two things: a unique variety that can stand apart from the competition on a cluttered apple deck and a brand that really captures the customer’s imagination. We’ve been told that Pazazz delivers against both of those goals. Pazazz’s unique and careful blend of sweet and tart flavor appeals to a broad range of apple consumers’ palettes, which we’re convinced is one of the reasons our partners continue to see repeat sales from the start to the end of the season.
We’ve also worked hard to provide a bold, high-impact merchandising solution for partners. Rich, high-impact red boxes; a distinct in-store claim “Wow Right Now” that speaks to Pazazz’s winning flavor profile; and a wide range of POS signage, bins, easy-to-grab on-the-go pouch bags, and in store demo’s that consumers love. Our retailers who maximize their in store footprint with Pazazz maximize their apple category sales. No doubt about that.
Q: How have consumer campaigns and media attention driven the growth of the variety?
DR: At first Pazazz was simply word of mouth. Excited consumers told their friends, family, and co-workers about this special new variety—and that word spread fast. The same happened with retailers too. Orders skyrocketed. Over the past few years as the press got hold of our story, we’ve seen a lot of media attention that has really driven public attention, excitement, and in store sales. This year we’re focused on putting special sample boxes of Pazazz into the hands of influential food experts and writers across North America—and reaction to date has been very positive.
Q: Are there any particular suggestions or ‘best practices’ Honeybear recommends for customers looking to maximize sales?
DR: It can be really tough to change consumer behavior. Consumers have their easy safe choices, and they know what they like. But we’ve found that once someone tries Pazazz, they buy Pazazz. So in terms of best practices at retail, we’d place tastings and demos high on the must do list. With a variety like Pazazz that is so different from the competition it’s important to educate consumers too—to share with them what makes Pazazz’ flavor profile so distinct and unique. We provide a comprehensive offering of recipes, behind the scenes videos, images and marketing tools to help our retail partners tell their story. The most successful—and there are many—do a great job of combining in store trial, customer education and making use of our plug and play brand marketing assets.
Q: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about Pazazz apples?
DR: I’d say that creating, driving, and sustaining sales comes down to one thing: flavor. If you can’t provide a retail partner with guaranteed flavor that’s going to capture the taste bud imagination of every consumer and keep them coming back for more and more, you shouldn’t be in the apple business today. Flavor is the number one requirement we here time and again from our retail partners and also that Pazazz is delivering that by the bushel.
With a fresh flavor, bite, and marketing materials, Pazazz is an apple variety on the rise—delivering real results in produce departments across the U.S.
For more fresh produce news, check in with AndNowUKnow.
TAMPA, FL - Hitting the books with its new store location at University of South Florida’s campus is Publix Super Markets. The store’s concept will be much like the company’s second downtown St. Petersburg location, and it will be 28,000-square-feet at Fletcher Avenue and USF Palm Drive. The store is currently under construction, after the company announced the onset of the project in 2016; the opening date, however, has not been determined.
“We’re excited to bring a Publix to the campus at USF where students can live, work, play, and eat,” Maria Brous, Director of Media and Community Relations, said in a statement, according to Tampa Bay Business Journal. “Conveniently located next to USF residence halls, the short walk, or bike ride will offer plenty of fresh grab-and-go options, including our world-famous Publix subs, deli teas, decadent desserts, and sushi.”
The company’s new downtown St. Petersburg store will make ordering subs and salads easier than ever with its newly re-designed deli ordering station. The USF store, though, will take on the company’s smaller-format prototype.
The company is looking to move into more urban neighborhoods in the Carolinas and the D.C. metro area, which are seen as prime real estate areas.
Prepared foods have been one of the focus for two of Publix’s recently unveiled, smaller formatted stores to allure grab-and-go customers. Beyond these store formats, the company will be focusing on prepared foods moving forward, especially when faced with Wegmans Food Markets in Virginia and North Carolina.
How will the focus on prepared foods for Publix’s new campus location assist in the company’s sales growth as it moves into new regions? AndNowUKnow will keep you updated with the latest!
HOUSTON, TX – Sysco Corporation reimagines and enriches customer experience with its newly launched redesigned website, sysco.com, now live this week. Looking to reinforce its brand and image, “At the heart of food and service,” Sysco is revamping its website to ensure its customer relationship is at the forefront of its 2018.
“We are excited to unveil a completely reimagined and customer-focused website that allows customers to better engage with Sysco and take advantage of resources and tools they need to be successful,” said Brian Beach, Senior Vice President of Sysco Labs and Customer Experience, according to a press release. “Our CX team worked directly with customers and other stakeholders to create a better, more relevant experience that makes it easier to engage with Sysco.”
The newly-launched site emphasizes Sysco’s differentiated position within the foodservice industry and showcases the company’s breadth of innovative solutions, including products, services, and customer-facing technology–all of which the updated site features.
Completed in-house at Sysco, the redesign was a collaborative endeavour led by Sysco Labs, Sysco’s innovation team. The new Sysco.com enriches the experience not only for customers and prospective customers, but also for operators, job seekers, investors, suppliers, and others seeking interaction with Sysco.
For more on the innovation happening in our industry, stay tuned to AndNowUKnow for the latest.
SPRINGDALE, AR - In today’s competitive retail landscape, somethings as seemingly simple as pricing and promotions can become a complex problem for many grocers. In an effort to simplify decision-making surrounding these types of decisions, Harps Food Stores has implemented a new A.I. (artificial intelligence) platform created by Daisy Intelligence Corporation.
“Daisy’s A.I. enables us to analyze Harp’s transactional data on a giant scale, and as a result, this significant improvement in promotional effectiveness supports our ability to meet the needs of our shoppers by keeping our prices competitive and enhancing our profitability,” said David Ganoung, Vice-President of Marketing at Harps.
Working together since early 2017, Daisy and Harps have been carefully collecting transactional information at each of the retailer’s 87 stores to gather specific, actionable product and marketing recommendations. According to a press release, Harp’s chose Daisy Intelligence solution to analyze data to “review which products should be featured in its frequent circulars.”
“We use Daisy Intelligence solution to analyze customer transactions and track the relationship between every item in every customer’s basket,” added Ganoung, explaining that Daisy’s ability to provide his company with data on sales for every item will help the company to promote the items that matter to the retailer’s customers the most.
Gary Saarenvirta, CEO of Daisy, explained, “The modern retail sector is as competitive as ever, and within retail, the grocery category’s notoriously thin margins leave very little room for mistakes and bad decisions when it comes to promotions and pricing. At the same time, as we know from direct experience with our wide-ranging customer base, A.I. is driving a revolution in the way merchandising decisions are made, and this is dramatically impacting client profitability.”
With Harps taking this new step toward being more competitive in the marketplace, AndNowUKnow will keep a watchful eye over the growing chain.
SANTA MARIA, CA – With the support of Fresh Avenue, GreenGate Fresh will build off of its 100-year-old family farming heritage with the addition of fresh-cut broccoli and cauliflower to its line-up.
“We have seen customers requesting broccoli and cauliflower items on our RFPs, so it is a perfect next step to add these two products to our line of value-added products with GreenGate’s passion and drive to bring the best produce to market,” stated Jay Iverson, VP of Sales for GreenGate Fresh, in a recent press release.
Because the co-production of cauliflower and broccoli allows for consolidation of picking and shipping, the new distribution will provide an advantage to foodservice buyers who currently bear the negative impacts and delays caused by the recent electric log mandate.
“The other thing that I think is really important and what sets GreenGate apart is their true triple wash line and monitoring of food safety. To now have broccoli and cauliflower products running through that same process is huge for our customers,” stated Dave Root, the Western Regional Sales Manager for Fresh Avenue.
The broccoli florets are available in 6/3-pounds and 4/3-pound packs while cauliflower florets are available in the 4/3-pound packs. To stay in the know on all new distributer offerings, keep reading AndNowUKnow.
FOLSOM, CA – With bountiful health benefits across the board, there are so many reasons to love fresh produce. This week, the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council announced more reasons to love blueberries after releasing findings from an ongoing study with the Universitè Laval in Quebec, Canada, and published in the BMC of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, highlighting the blue fruit’s role in fighting bacteria.
According to a press release, Highbush blueberry proanthocyandins (PACs)–a type of plant compound found in blueberries–have a beneficial effect against the type of bacteria that is associated with an aggressive form of periodontal disease.
Periodontal diseases are mainly the results of infections and inflammation of the gums and bone that surround and support the teeth, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is caused by bacteria in the mouth that infects tissue surrounding the tooth, which leads to inflammation around the tooth and subsequently periodontal disease. Approximately 47.2 percent of adults 30 years and older have some form of periodontal disease, and 70.1 percent of adults 65 years and older have periodontal disease.
Within the study, investigators isolated the PACs from frozen highbush blueberries, and a microplate dilution assay test was performed to determine the effect of highbush blueberry PACs on the growth of the bacteria. Results showed that PACs with concentrations ranging from 500 to 3.9 ug/ml significantly and dose-dependently reduced bacteria formation. The study’s investigators also noted that the antibacterial activity of the PACs appeared to involve damage to the bacterial cell membranes.
Additionally, the PACs from the blueberries were shown to protect oral macrophages–white blood cells that are crucial to our immune system–as well as blocked the molecular pathway involved in inflammation–a factor largely involved in gum disease.
While the Highbush Blueberry Council states that more evidence is needed, the results of this study add to the body of research on blueberry’s potential antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
For more news giving us even more reasons to love fresh produce, stay tuned to AndNowUKnow.