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Fresh Farms gives California table grape season update

Fresh Farms - California Table Grape Update

We at Fresh Farms BB #:194140 finished our Mexican grape season around July 11, the same week we started up in California out of our Fresh Farms offices and Cold storage in Kingsburg, CA.

The California production this year should be a little lower in volume than last season by about 10 to 12% due to a frost that occurred during the growing cycle. The initial quality of the grapes we have seen thus far have been outstanding.

While it’s true we are seeing hot weather push the greens harvest earlier but much the same as last season for the industry and reds don’t color as fast when its that hot, but on our company, Molina farmed sweet globes and Scarlet Royals we have had excellent consistency in size, color and brix. A good volume of our Sweet globe crop has been going to export this season as the size was really large and the brix were well over 18,19,20 going out.

We see things settling in now and good supplies for promotions for retailers and food service to have big sales for grapes. Grapes are a great category to promote this time of year as we have ample volumes and excellent quality. Retailers can really boost their store traffic by keeping displays full of all three colors and of course offering the candy varieties when available to extend the category and delight the customers with flavors they may have not tried before.

We had a great retail demand call on our Candy Hearts that we sold in July though the third week of August. That grape was big, delicious, fragrant and unique flavor from other reds. These types of varieties can really turn on your grape table for extra sales and fun for the customers to discover.

We look to finish the season strong with possibly less fruit in the marketplace than last season going into November and December. Next up for us is Peru.

The 2022 California grape season is off to an excellent start. This has been a great season for flavor, quality, and volume. Currently there is ample promotable volume for all three colors of Seedless grapes. For Fresh Farms, our quality improves every season, as we continue to transition into the newest varieties, and those vines become more established.

These include Ivory, Sweet Globes, Great Greens, and Autumn Kings for green, and Scarlet Royals, Krissy, and Allison for reds, and Autumn Royals for blacks. All of the product is harvested from prime locations scattered throughout the Central Valley of California.

The grape market is currently in promotable volume. Because of unusual challenging weather events, we expect this to change by the first of October, so now is the time to advertise.

A couple of things we can recommend to retailers to maximize sales is to promote. Retailers can work around the visual appeal to customers by displaying all three colors, and allowing plenty of shelf space. It’s no secret that grapes are among the top grossing dollar volume for produce, so with proper merchandising magic, September can be a top sales month.

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