For more than a year, many consumers hunkered down at home, relying on whatever culinary skills they had before the pandemic.
At first, most believed the lockdown would be relatively short. When it wasn’t, after the initial shock and survival mode wore off, many people began to get creative and earnestly explore the nearly unlimited possibilities of cooking.
Michael Muzyk, president of New York foodservice distributor Baldor BB #:121770 can attest to this surge with an anecdote.
“Many of our operator customers cut back their orders from 100 produce items to maybe a dozen basics,” he explains. These included mainstays like potatoes, onions, and carrots, which enjoyed a bump in sales at many retailers, as well as fruit like apples, berries, oranges, and avocados.
Yet Baldor’s other rapidly expanding customer base, home cooks, went in the other direction.
“Our home delivery customers were asking for zucchini blossoms and fennel pollen,” he says. “We delivered $5,000 worth of specialty foods and produce to a guy’s house in Vermont!”
For Don Goforth, marketing director of Family Tree Farms Marketing BB #:169364, LLC in Reedley, CA, which grows and ships cherries, berries, and stone fruit, the most important aspect of selling fruit (and vegetables) is all about taste.
“Flavor is the main driver; there’s no room for products that don’t taste great. We work with a number of breeders who produce the best-tasting fruit in the world. Before Covid, people weren’t buying produce for delivery.
“Restaurants closed, so people began spending more time in their kitchens. As consumers felt more secure ordering online, retailers recognized the importance of getting deliveries of high-quality produce right—and 2020 became one of the best sales years in history for produce,” he says.
This is an excerpt from the cover story of the July/August 2021 issue of Produce Blueprints Magazine. Click here to read the whole issue.
