Tag: innovation

Zespri is calling for visionaries, disruptors, dreamers, and darers to apply to its newly launched innovation funding initiative, ZAG.

Bagged salads and clamshells have opened new doors for the produce industry, but they also bring challenges the industry is going to have to face sooner, rather than later.

It’s hard to pin down the change from sterile, utilitarian supermarkets to the shopping adventures crafted by retailers today, but Tristan Simpson of Tristan Michele Marketing, says it was a noticeable change, and it truly did change the way people shop.

For decades, greenhouses brought us cucumbers, bell peppers, and tomatoes in areas and climates where it wasn’t possible before. This, too, was a gamechanger for the fresh produce industry.

Another innovation that changed the game, in the apple category at least, almost didn’t happen.

Tomatoes in the produce department in the late 1980s and 1990s were a little green in the gills. “Gas green,” to be exact.

Clamshells led to other effects and efficiencies in packaging. The same goes for most UPC-coded produce items.

The adoption of clamshells resulted in selling more strawberries, many more. As well as other berries like raspberries and blueberries in clamshells.

Picture the so-called “berry patch” at your favorite retailer. It’s likely a cooler case of neat and tidy rows of shiny clear plastic clamshells.

Companies kicked around the idea of bagged salad for foodservice applications in the late 1970s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that Salinas, CA-based Fresh Express, Inc. bought the first packaged salad to market with a shelf life long enough to allow for retail distribution on a small scale.