All of this speaks to the evolution of how consumers purchase and eat fruits and vegetables. The very definition of what constitutes ‘fresh produce’ is changing quickly. To get a sense of this evolution, consider this: who takes the time to chop up and prepare a salad anymore? For those on the store operations side, would you trust any produce clerk to take a knife and trim head lettuce or romaine!?! And on the buy side, today’s produce buyer does not approach produce procurement as being significantly different than buying dry grocery—all of this is happening before our very eyes.
Does this mean the marketing efforts for organic, processed, and juice will make conventional produce departments go the way of vinyl records and phones with cords? Perhaps as buyers don’t know how to buy it, store clerks don’t know how to handle it, and more importantly, consumers are looking to acquire their produce in a different form with a different delivery model. At last year’s trade shows, I was continually struck by how little bulk produce was on display. Plenty of packaged products, further processed, and juice, but very little produce was displayed in a traditional way. This means smaller produce departments, fewer trained staff, and less differentiation between retailers.
None of this is ‘bad’ necessarily, but it does cause me to reflect with interest—where is the industry headed? And if the California study is reflective of the industry in general, it would be well worth giving thought to a decline in tonnage and how to support numeric growth.
