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MCFARLAND, CA - A new member has joined the Sunview family of companies—industry veteran Mitchell Wetzel will now take on the role of Vice-President of Sales at Sunview Marketing International. Sunview Vineyards of California, Inc. announced his appointment was effective as of Tuesday, January 16.
"Sunview has always been known for the highest quality conventional and organic grapes and raisins and I am excited to join their team,” shared Mitchell when ANUK asked him to express his excitement. “They not only have an amazing customer focus to the business, but also a respect for the land they have been farming for the past three generations. As a testament to that commitment, Sunview's Stella Bella® and Gem® grape programs have had tremendous success in recent years. We are looking forward to many great seasons ahead."
Mitch’s background in agricultural sales management and fresh produce is vast. According to a press release, the veteran has served for 16 years as General Manager for Alliance International, as well as time in roles at BuyProduce.com, Periccone Citrus, and Sunworld International.
In joining Sunview, Mitch will become part of more than sixty years of history. The roots of the Sunview brand run deep, with the family both living and farmed in the Central Valley of California for over 3 generations.
YAKIMA, WA – With spring on its way, Domex Superfresh Growers is gearing up for a beautiful, bountiful apple season. Here with another Orchard Update, Chief Horticulturist Dave Gleason walks us through the pre-season prep process Domex takes to prepare for as many as 400 apples per tree across its acreage for its 2018 season.
“So much of the orchards are about details. Right now, we’re pruning and shaping the trees, and selecting the areas we want the fruit to grow,” Gleason says. “But if we had a thousand acres, and we had a thousand trees on each acre, that’s a million trees we’d have to get done between the middle of November until the first of March. We have that limited of time to go through and make all the cuts we need to make on the trees. So, for example, we might make 50-60 cuts per tree. And on each of those trees we might want around 100-150 apples, some bigger trees might have 350-400 apples. Each of those comes from one of the buds on the trees that we’ve left on the tree in the perfect place. It’s a big deal.”
One strategy the company has in meeting its orchard needs is using platforms. In the past, Superfresh used ladders, but there were a limited number of people who had the ladder skills to do the work safely. With platforms, however, conditions are safer, and since the platforms move through the trees, the workers are able to focus on the details and make more helpful cuts along the way.
And with modern technology aiding the process, Superfresh has also had to adjust its process to control yield.
“Ultimately, we could have way more apples then we need. So, the first thing that we’re doing each year after apples are picked is going back into that process of adjusting the crop load and selecting where we want those apples to stay. It just gets mind boggling as you look through the trees and you think about all the potential there. I like to think about the potential and all the flowers that are going to be there in three month’s time. It’s going to be beautiful,” Gleason finishes.
Despite the cold Washington winter now, Dave Gleason and the Domex Superfresh Growers’ team are looking forward to a great season.
For more of the latest in produce, stay tuned to AndNowUKnow.
SALINAS, CA and CORAL GABLES, FL - Two leaders in fresh produce are coming together with Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A.'s announcement that the company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Mann Packing. Del Monte will acquire Mann Packing for an aggregate consideration of approximately $361 million. Mann Packing's annual sales were approximately $535 million in 2017. The agreement was reached on February 5, 2018, bringing the innovative leading grower, processor, and supplier of a broad variety of fresh and value-added vegetable products together with the Fresh Del Monte team.
"Everyone at Mann is excited with this development," Lorri Koster, Chairman and CEO of Mann Packing. "We share Del Monte's values and commitment of providing fresh, high-quality produce-based foods that are nutritious and delicious. Both our companies have been successful in their own right with their superior quality, service, and value to our customers and consumers in all channels throughout North America. This will only be enhanced by combining the business expertise and skills of two of the industry's premiere organizations."
The Fresh Del Monte and Mann Packing transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and additional conditions and is expected to close during the first quarter of 2018, according to a press release.
"We are extremely pleased about our acquisition of Mann Packing, a leader in the fresh and value-added vegetable category," said Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fresh Del Monte. "Mann Packing's strength in the vegetable category, one of the fastest growing fresh food segments, will provide us with synergies, enhancing our ability to better serve our combined customers and address consumers' needs for healthier products. This acquisition is a significant step toward our goal to be the world's leading supplier of healthful, wholesome, and nutritious fresh and prepared food and beverages for consumers."
In addition to the regulatory process for the transaction, the companies will also be working internally toward integrating Mann Packing into Fresh Del Monte's operation.
"Moving forward, Mann Packing will become a division of Fresh Del Monte, and Lorri, and I will become a part of the transition team as we look to bring our company into the fold," Gina Nucci, Director of Corporate Marketing, Mann Packing, shares with me. "The day-to-day operations will remain business as usual. As a 600 million dollar company, Del Monte is purchasing us not only for our assets and operations, but for our expertise and talent as well."
Long term, Gina tells me that changes will be made within the company structure as a part of the transition process and that Mann Packing and Fresh Del Monte are taking it one day at a time.
"Lorri and I will both be staying on with the company in a changing capacity yet to be announced and are excited for this next phase of growth. This sale was strategic. With Fresh Del Monte's history in fresh produce, they already speak the same language and also have those deep roots and relationships here in the Salinas Valley that will allow our companies to align," she says. "Their team knows the growing, the harvesting, and the fresh processing aspects of our region, and are committed to the same standards of food safety, quality, and customer service that we are."
As part of that transition team, Gina and Lorri will ensure that the changes moving forward are implemented efficiently and smoothly to prime this exciting new acquisition for growth.
Congratulations to Fresh Del Monte and Mann Packing on this recent news! We are excited to see what these powerhouse companies will bring to the future of our fresh produce industry.
LOS ANGELES, CA - With the demand for viable long-term protein substitutes rising alongside the exponential growth of the world population, desire for a comparable substitute to animal protein has become an unavoidable sector of the market. Ethan Brown and his team at Beyond Meat have already began work to create a meat analogue that looks and tastes enough like the real thing to sway even the most ardent carnivores. His efforts will now progress with the aid of a new lab in El Segunda.
"There's a lot of people who have created meat analogues out of soy that loosely mimics the experience of meat," Brown said to the Los Angeles Times. "But we really want to look at this in a more fundamental way, and we want to be the first people who build a piece of meat perfectly from plants."
The brand has doubled revenues since last year, gaining not only market success (the brand now boasts menu space at TGI Fridays, Bareburger, and BOA Steakhouse), but also, celebrity endorsements from basketball star Kyrie Irving and the writers of South Park.
Brown refuses to settle for imitation quality substitutes; he instead wants to make the chicken strips, ground beef, and (soon-to-be-released) sausages indistinguishable from their real meat counterparts. Brown hopes to someday reach the prophesied vegan pinnacle of substitute steak and bacon.
"Then go work at Morningstar," Brown says to employees who feel comfortable settling for what he refers to as mediocre, paleteable, and other fake meat substitutes, "It has to be indistinguishable."
The new El Segundo location will add 26,000-square-feet of research and development space in which the companies 150 current employees and 40 prospective new hires may further push the boundaries of the product.
Beyond Meat has received investments from the likes of Bill Gates and, with $72 million in funding, according to the Los Angeles Times, and a diverse portfolio of backers from Tyson to the Humane Society-Beyond Meat, has begun the uphill battle against, or rather, for the 98 percent of Americans who still indulge in animal flesh. For this seemingly indomitable task, Brown has recruited biochemists and biophysicists in addition to food scientists.
"As much as we need food scientists, we realized we had to have a broader set of tools," Brown said. "Over 1,000 molecules make meat taste like meat. It's painstaking matching those molecules in plants to create the same sensory experience."
To continue following the consumer push towards a comprable animal protein substitute and the industry response to such a daunting task, keep reading AndNowUKnow.
WENATCHEE, WA – If you love Honeycrisp apples, fear not! Stemilt will extend the Honeycrisp season through spring into summer with the new Honeyhill™ program, announced the grower in a press release.
“Honeyhill is an exciting addition to include in our family of brands as we will be offering one of the most popular apple varieties for a longer timeframe,” stated Roger Pepperl, Stemilt Marketing Director. “We’re choosing the best Honeycrisp apples for Honeyhill boxes, which means retailers can promote fruit with beautiful colors and flavors that taste as if you had just picked them from the tree back in the fall.”
The Honeyhill apple lable will include only Honeycrisp apples of high color and high quality, including the Royal apple—a new Honeycrisp apple.
“The Royal Honeycrisp is a beautiful strain with great color and finish. Its real advantage is that our teams can pick full-colored fruit at the right starch levels in order to store well in our controlled atmosphere rooms. When we pull these apples out at a later date, the starches have converted to sugars with good acids that deliver that amazing fall flavor in the spring and summer months. Honeyhill is a great program to build late-season Honeycrisp sales around,” said Pepperl.
Cultivated in Washington state and carefully timed for ideal starch values, the Royal apple is grown with careful attention to climate, including the application of shade cloth and windscreens when necessary. Before reaching the consumer, the apple is packaged in a varnished box available in both standard and euro carton.
“The packaging was designed to highlight the distinctness of this apple strain,” stated Pepperl. “The packaging is bold, fun, and stimulating, making it a great building tool for your produce department displays.”
The apple is available in both conventional and organic varities: “We all know organic is a growing category, so packing Honeycrisp both organically and conventionally will result in high sales returns for the retailer,” stated Pepperl. “We’re excited about Honeyhill. The fall spice, the sweet, crisp crunch and the juices of the Royal Honeycrisp will please the many fans of Honeycrisp and continue to elevate the apple category through this premium, sought-after apple."
To keep in the know on all apple updates, stay with us at AndNowUKnow.
KUTZTOWN, PA - Love to feel the burn when you bite into your produce? So does ANUK: that’s why when we saw this new straight-to-your-door hot pepper subscription service, we couldn’t help our mouths from getting a little bit watery. Launched by Robyn Jasko of Homesweet Homegrown organic hot sauce fame, the subscription service offers three monthly shipments in each harvest month from September to November, each featuring six unique and rare chili peppers, and some even topping the ranks as the hottest varieties in the world.
“In 2013, we became the highest funded hot sauce on Kickstarter because of our farm-to-bottle mission,” wrote Jasko in her post on the service’s Kickstarter phase. “Since then, we've grown more then 50,000 pepper plants on our 3 acre field, shipping peppers to chefs, customers and hot sauce makers all over the country. We are dedicated to sustainable farming, and never apply pesticides, fertilizers or chemicals to our peppers.”
According to the post, housed on Kickstarter, alongside the peppers, each box also includes a detailed history and overview of each variety, including the Scoville Scale, flavor profiles, pairing info, and more. A personal letter from Jasko’s company with details about the growing season, along with storage instructions for freezing, dehydrating, and pickling your peppers will also be included in the box, so you can enjoy them all year long. Have any amateur pepper growers on your friends list? Jasko also offers tips for saving seeds from your peppers so you can grow your own at home.
But as high in demand as a hot pepper subscription service such as this one seems to be, Jasko is only offering this first iteration as part of Kickstarter's Make 100 initiative, meaning there will be only 100 subscriptions to go around and 100 single-order individual sampler boxes. With all the attention the campaign has been getting from the likes of Food & Wine, Martha Stewart, and more, we can only hope Jasko comes back in full force next season.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - Now that we know the Eagles won, taking home the title for the first time in history and leaving fans sitting in pools of sweaty angst throughout the Big Game, let’s talk about the fun part: commercials. This is the stuff worth watching because, whether its nightmare-inducing like the 2016 Mountain Dew Puppy Monkey Baby or tactfully-inspiring and iconic like the 1992 Pepsi that was drunk by Cindy Crawford, we at AndNowUKnow are here for it and ready to report on the drool-worthy advertisements of this year’s event.
Here are our top 5:
Doritos and Mountain Dew
Well, this commercial taps into just about every pop culture want and need. Game of Thrones? Check. Early 2000s hip hop? Check. Morgan Freeman? Check. Peter Dinklage made his way through an avenue of chairs backlit by fireplace bursts while munching on Blaze flavored Doritos as he raps Busta Rhymes’ lyrics in “Look at Me Now” and strutting his way toward the camera. The first half of the commercial is stamped with the Blaze hashtag #SpitFire, only to trail into the second half of the commercial where Morgan Freeman is met with opposite, icy temperatures with his Mountain Dew Ice. Freeman raps his way through Missy Elliott’s “Get Yo Freak on,” before the camera cuts to an icy cold Mountain Dew Ice alongside the hashtag #IceCold. The two actors meet at the end, when fire meets ice.
Amazon
My reasoning for this is pick, though it wasn’t exactly food-focused, is the imminent influence it has on our industry. The e-commerce titan taps into its Alexa for a fun and friendly reminder that Amazon’s home is, in fact, your home, and if she falters… well, chaos ensues. Rare are the days when I am met with a laugh-out-loud commercial, but lo and behold, Amazon pulled out all the stops. Consumers asking Alexa their daily questions are met with professionals who, like Cardi B, don’t know the answers or, like Gordon Ramsay, who offer terrible advice. The point here was to reinforce the ways in which Amazon’s Alexa helps lives run more smoothly, how Amazon has become an irreplaceable part of our day.
M&M’s
Wow! Words cannot explain how excited I was to see this Danny DeVito star as the Red M&M. Dreams do come true…or maybe it was the lucky penny I picked up before the game. The use of such a powerhouse funny-man made M&M’s more exciting, fun, and, surprisingly, young.
Jack in the Box
Working in the food industry in any capacity has you thoroughly familiar with Martha Stewart, but it looks like someone has a bone to pick with the homesteading genius. Jack from Jack in the Box confronts Stewart after she tries to downplay the recipes fast food companies offer, only to be met with an equally determined Stewart who takes off her earrings before a battle-of-the-food emerges. The commercial ends with a brilliantly positioned hashtag for consumers to latch onto: #JackVsMartha. Who will win?
Kraft Heinz
Ok now, this was a masterclass in consumer engagement. The company released a commercial before the event, clueing consumers into the opportunity to send in their own Super Bowl experiences. What they debuted during the game, then, was a series of images and videos, which the company explained, “showed us thousands of ways to family.” The message made its way through fun pictures and videos of kids dancing, families laughing and gathered round. What better way to enter the homes of consumers than highlight their Big Game festivities?
How will these commercials push our industry forward? Will there be more developments for Alexa—maybe more companies coming out with their own version? Will companies continue to engage with their consumers like Kraft, using consumers’ experiences and voices to lead the way? Will Danny DeVito ever return to his red candy-coated shell? AndNowUKnow will continue to report on the latest developments in our industry and the advertisements that influence it!
CINCINNATI, OH and BLACKBURN, U.K. – After months of speculation about the retailer’s C-store business, the Kroger Co. has finally announced a definitive agreement. The U.S.-based grocer has agreed to sell the entirety of its convenience store business unit to EG Group—a U.K.-based, privately-held gas station and convenience store retailer—in a transaction valued at $2.15 billion.
"Our convenience store business has been a part of our company for many years. We want to thank our management team and associates for their enduring commitment to our customers, and for the contributions they have made to build our supermarket fuel business," said Mike Schlotman, Kroger's EVP and CFO, in a press release. "As part of our regular review of assets, it has become clear that our strong convenience store business unit will better meet its full potential outside of our business."
In October of 2017, Kroger announced its intent to explore “strategic alternatives” for the company’s C-store business—alternatives that included the potential of an all-out sale in conjunction with the retailer’s Restock Kroger plan.
As part of the agreement, the two companies noted in a press release, EG Group will establish a North American headquarters in Cincinnati, OH.
"This is an exciting time for EG Group, the entry into the U.S. market presents a fantastic opportunity to deliver a successful retail offer to consumers across the various states,” said Mohsin Issa, EG Group Founder and Co-CEO. “We have had much success across Europe and we firmly believe the Kroger assets present a fantastic foundation to overlay our retail experience and know-how in the U.S. We are committed to investing in the Kroger network, partnering with leading retail brands, and working with the exceptional management team and associates transferring across to deliver a comprehensive retail offer."
EG Group will continue to operate formerly Kroger-owned stores under their established banner names—including Turkey Hill, Loaf 'N Jug, Kwik Shop, Tom Thumb, and Quik Stop.
"One of the most important considerations in our decision-making process was continued operations to ensure minimal disruption to our associates," continued Schlotman. "We are very pleased the EG Group plans to establish their North American headquarters in Cincinnati. EG Group is also a recognized international petrol forecourt convenience operator and they have a commercial model which clearly looks to enhance the consumer offer by working with leading retail brands customers know and trust…We now look forward to working with them closely to ensure a smooth transition for associates."
Kroger will reportedly use the net proceeds from its sale to repurchase shares and to lower its net total debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio. Kroger's supermarket fuel centers and its Turkey Hill Dairy were not included in the transaction.
How will the entry of EG Group into the U.S. and a newly-streamlined Kroger affect the North American grocery market? AndNowUKnow will continue to report.
LOS ANGELES, CA - California-based APB Inc. dba Vision Produce Company recently announced in a press release that it sold its interest in New Jersey-, Texas-, and Florida-based Vision Import Group, LLC. to Raul Millan and Ronnie Cohen. The results of this purchase did not include a change in ownership for Vision Produce Company.
After enjoying a 10-year-old partnership, the companies agreed to move forward in different directions with independent strategies. Both Vision Produce Company and Vision Import Group hope to create two powerhouse best-in-class companies out of this transaction, as they focus on their individual pursuits.
How will this divergence of power yield broader-reaching influence over the industry, and how will the purchase take shape? AndNowUKnow will continue to keep you updated with the latest fresh produce industry happenings.