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The Produce Department of the Future

An end-of-supply chain perspective
Retail Reflections_2017

One of the many facets of the produce industry is how a relatively benign or uncommon item becomes “hot” with consumers.

I remember working in a produce department and seeing kiwifruit—and the creative ways we used to describe it—for the first time. I also remember when I first began selling bean sprouts, bok choy, and Napa cabbage.

Red Jim nectarines were so popular Jimmy Ito could decide how many he wanted to sell and to whom. Hothouse tomatoes-on-the-vine, grape tomatoes, and heirloom varieties brought new interest to the tomato category. Today, we’re seeing the impact of “superfoods.” Kale and beets are two items I never guessed would become hot sellers. These are just a few examples of why the fresh produce industry is never boring.

That said, I’ve become fascinated with the form in which fruits and vegetables are being delivered. Take beets, for example: when Love Beets came out with innovative ways of offering beets to consumers—combining health benefits with a convenient form of preparation and consumption—these items took off.

Anyone who follows the produce industry to any degree would not find this particularly revealing. After all, you need only look at precut salads or fruit or microwavable vegetables to see this in practice. But what has captured my attention is the proliferation of fresh juice. What Pom Wonderful did with pomegranates and Bolthouse did with vegetables seems to have been just the beginning.

At Fresh Summit last year, I was amazed at the explosion of fresh juice offerings. At a Tsamma Juice-sponsored event, it seemed like every kind of organic juice known to mankind was offered for samples, and many, if not the majority, of new exhibitors were offering fresh juice of some kind. In contrast, I found little space given to bulk displays of fresh fruits and vegetables. The amount of juice, coupled with the wide variety of precut and packaged items, makes me wonder what a fresh produce department will look like down the road.

When you couple the clear interest of consumers in convenience and a marked decline in the skillset of retail supermarket buyers (especially among publicly-held retailers as discussed in previous columns), it will surely impact what ‘fresh’ means and will look like.

Maintaining a large, 600-plus SKU produce department becomes problematic, and as consumers move to getting the flavor and nutritional benefits of fruits and vegetables in processed form, is it even necessary?

Harvard University recently released a study finding that frozen vegetables can have better nutritional value than their fresh counterparts. This finding was, however, qualified by noting that the average consumer keeps a fresh item for seven days, so the comparison was between a frozen item and a fresh item after seven days of storage.

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