It’s been a great start to the season for cherry growers in British Columbia, says Richard Isaacs, managing director of Creston, British Columbia-based Global Fruit,
offering growers some relief after last year’s challenges.
A devastating freeze in January 2024 wiped out more than 90% of fruit buds for that season across the province. Isaacs said the cherry trees rebounded well and put all their energy last summer into developing buds for the 2025 crop.
“The engine of the tree, which is the leaves and the roots, has to do two jobs: It has to feed that year’s fruit, and it has to build buds for the following season,” he said. “There was no fruit, so 100% of the energy from the tree went into buds [for the 2025 crop], which is why we came out this spring with probably more flowers than we’ve ever seen.”
This spring brought favorable weather during bloom. Isaacs said he doesn’t want to tempt fate as there’s still a lot that can impact this year’s cherry crop (rain, cold snaps, etc.), but from what he’s seen in orchards, it’s the making of a nice, balanced crop.
“We’re always looking for the right ratio of leaf to fruit,” he said. “That fruit-to-leaf ratio is important, and it looks good at the moment. We could not feel happier about what we’re seeing in the orchards.”
Bounce-back for retailers
Isaacs said this potentially larger British Columbia crop can help retailers make up some ground from a short California cherry crop.
“I think that retailers will be looking at their year-over-year numbers in May, and they’ll be a long way behind where they were in 2024,” he said. “So, they’re going to be looking for opportunities to drive more sales in the second half of the summer, because cherries are such an important item in the produce department.”
Isaacs said retailers should expect to make up some ground with a strong Washington crop and a strong British Columbia crop.
“Washington can do great things, I hope,” he said. “Then retailers can finish really strong and hopefully make up some of the lost ground that they have missed out on during the California season with us here in Canada.”
It’s important that retailers emphasize retail displays to help drive cherry sales, Isaacs added.
“We all know cherries are an impulse purchase,” he said. “It has to have a great display. Your customers need to walk into the store and go, ‘Wow, they look great,’ and not be able to walk past them. It’s all about the display. The execution at the store level matters.”
Washington connection
Isaacs said he doesn’t see the Washington crop as a competitor, but rather helping to grow the overall cherry category with consumers.
“We wish our friends in Washington to have the very best season possible,” he said. “We want them to have great quality cherries so that customers enjoy cherries every time they go shopping and are in the cherry-eating mood by the time we get started.”
If consumers buy cherries with subpar qualities due to poor weather in other cherry-growing regions in the U.S., that could impact consumers’ overall interest in buying cherries that season, Isaacs explained.
“If they’re not very good, people won’t enjoy them, and then they’ll be put off from buying cherries,” he said. “And then we start our season, and half the cherry buyers have already decided cherries are bad this summer and stop buying them.”
