Fresh Advice for Produce Retail
My recipe for getting the freshness message across to customers
This whole concept of delivering fresh advice for produce retail has been at the centre of my professional activities for several decades. What can be read on this page is something I wrote 20 years. It is as relevant today, as it was then.
Albany, on Auckland's North Shore, was for many years Auckland's fruit bowl. Apple orchards were everywhere and strawberry gardens had trouble keeping up with the demand generated by a growing city.
The Auckland Harbour Bridge changed the dynamics when it was completed in 1959 and rural North Shore became an enormous building site. Our offices are now where the apple orchards use to be and the last strawberry patch in the neighbourhood is up for sale.
The pace of change has been enormous. Supermarket store managers in the Glenfield and Sunnynook neighbourhoods used to worry about the impact on their weekly produce performance of orchard gate sales. The stores are still around, rebranded and all, but orchard operations in the immediate neighbourhood have long gone.
With it went a lifestyle shopping option for Shore dwellers: the ability to conveniently buy produce at the orchard gate.Orchard gates are still around though. It's just that one has to travel further to get to them.
Some people do exactly that - seek out the orchard or garden gate whenever the opportunity presents itself. And the reason these hardcorers are willing to go to the length they do, is that they have an inherent discomfort about the "freshness" of produce sold in supermarkets and greengrocers.
This brings us to a topic that keeps shoppers around the globe very busy. The question they are asking themselves consciously or subconsciously as they shop is this: "how fresh is the produce I am buying today?"
As we know as produce industry professionals, there is no easy answer to that question. Lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower are probably fresher than most as these crops are harvested daily all year around.
Apples, kumara and onions on the other hand are harvested, stored and fed into the supply chain over a period of months.
Whilst this makes perfect sense to all of us who deal with produce for a living, it does not necessarily satisfy consumers who buy fruits and vegetables to feed themselves and their household members.
And because they are potentially able to buy all their produce in one place; i.e., your store, they subconsciously expect all produce purchased in your store to have similar characteristics; such as, being competitively priced, being safe to eat and being "fresh".
How do you cope with that? Well, here is some fresh advice for produce retail.
For starters, you try to have "fresh" stock delivered to your stores on a daily basis, sometimes even more than once.
Secondly, you are committed to presenting and displaying your produce assortment in a way that communicates to your customers that you: a. care and b. know what you are doing.
Thirdly, you have a rotation and maintenance program in place that is reflective of the perishable nature of your produce.
Fourthly, you know about your produce, in fact you are passionate about your fruit and vegetables. This creates a positive energy in your department that is subconsciously communicated to customers who respond by increasing their produce shop in your store.
What is the catch phrase on those Tui beer billboards again? YEAH RIGHT!
The reality though is that you better get around to managing your departments with a "fresh" mindset, because the orchard gates are not just disappearing in Albany.
All over the country suburbia is stretching its muscle and the orchard and market gardens are being pushed further and further out.
Consumers are looking to you for recreating the "freshness" experience for them without necessarily being able to articulate this.
So, anyone keen to maintain market share in an economy that is headed for recession and where the price of fuel is forcing consumers to get a bit more selective about how far they stray for their food needs?
All you have to do is stick to the recipe above and get on with it because the good old days have gone.
Simple as, eh?
There are three important messages contained within this page:
- Fresh is a concept that relies upon the "eye of the beholder"; i.e., it is determined by individual customer perception and opinion.
- Produce retailers can contribute passion for their products and behaviours that underpin the "fresh" concept to evoke
- The physical distance between urban shoppers and horticultural production units is continuing to grow, thus reducing customers' ability to treat rural road side stall and orchard gate operations as viable alternatives to supermarket produce departments and green grocers.
With a little fresh advice for produce retail, a dose of common sense and passion for fruit and vegetables, individual produce managers and green grocers can make a difference. And the How Fresh is Fresh ? question becomes a little easier to answer.