PALM DESERT, Calif. — Delivering a critical wake-up call at West Coast Produce Expo 2026, a powerhouse panel of retail, research and marketing experts revealed a startling reality: despite driving $16 billion in annual sales and averaging an astonishing 92 produce shopping trips a year, fresh produce is actually losing ground with Hispanic consumers year-over-year.
During the discussion, “Billions in the Basket: Engaging the Hispanic Shopper With Fresh,” industry experts revealed insights and best practices for capturing the world’s fastest-growing demographic, including moving past superficial holiday promotions to offer authentic, year-round, cross-departmental solution selling and cultural storytelling.
Jonna Parker, vice president of fresh foods at Circana, kicked off the session with a look at the numbers.
“If anyone in the room is doubting the power of the Hispanic consumer in our industry of produce, I want to anchor you: $16 billion of current U.S. retail sales come from Hispanics. That’s about 16% of total U.S. sales across the entirety of every type of retail chain.”
But the days of thinking it’s a given that Hispanic shoppers will buy produce are over, she says.
“I’ve been in this industry for more than two decades and I think we kind of just relied on that consumer showing up,” says Parker, who shared data that produce has only seen growth of about 10% with Hispanic consumers.
“And that growth of the Hispanic shopper, when separated from all other races and ethnicities, is actually underperforming. So, we and fresh produce are losing ground with this shopper year-over-year,” she says.
This is especially vital because the Hispanic shopper is a frequent and powerful shopper, with the average Hispanic household making about 92 trips a year for fresh produce, Parker says.
“We are in a just-in-time shopping world. Much of the retail growth of fresh produce since 2022 has been in these super frequent trips,” she says. “One of the other really interesting things about Hispanic shoppers is when they buy produce, their basket is deep and it propels them to not just be more frequent, but to actually end up generating about 15% more per household annually.
“If you attract a loyal Hispanic shopper to your store or your category, they are an outsized value to your overall bottom line,” says Parker.
And while about 60% of the Hispanic household produce dollar is anchored in traditional grocery, Circana sees these shoppers gaining a lot of ground in other channels.
A Diverse Demographic
It’s also important to remember that the Hispanic produce shopper is a very diverse multicultural group, says Ruth Villalonga, CEO and founder of Villa Communications.
For a demographic that’s not a monolith, what are the core cultural values that make fresh produce central to the Hispanic household?
“If U.S. Latinos were a country, they will be the fourth largest economy in the world. They just surpassed Japan. So, it’s a total of $4.1 trillion in GDP. And from that, $2.8 trillion is their purchasing power,” says Villalonga, who adds that the U.S. Latino economy is the fastest growing in the world after China.
“It’s not about how do we capture them today? It’s about how do we futureproof our business because these are the people driving the economic growth in America,” she says.
One reason Hispanic shoppers are a growth engine of fresh is the makeup of their households, says Villalonga, who notes that according to the census, one in five Hispanics live in a multigenerational household.
You have more people, more meals and more occasions where fresh food includes products that have a cultural language or a connection back home, she says. And while she says 90% of Latinos in the U.S. were born in this country, they inherit fierce food traditions from their parents and grandparents.
“In the same way Americans have peanut butter and jelly or mac and cheese as comfort food, for us it is the fruits and vegetables that connect us back home,” she says. “When I go to Vallarta and pay $17.99 for a pound of soursop, I’m actually buying the flavor of my childhood because my grandma had one of those plants in her backyard. So, it’s really about that connection — that nostalgia that moves this shopper.”
Villalonga attributes the decline in Hispanic shopper engagement in the produce category in part to a lack of storytelling and connection.
“We are not seeing this consumer as multidimensional,” she says. “The transaction buys you a visit, but the connection buys you a generation of buyers.”
Authenticity and Multicultural Relevance
From the meat department to seafood to the fruteria and made-to-order guacamole feature, fresh produce is merchandised across Santa Clarita, Calif.-based Vallarta Supermarkets’ stores. Here, Robert Olguin, director of buying and procurement, has been with the grocer for 13 years and in grocery for 35 years.
“Vallarta really puts a lot of attention on the experience of the shopper as they walk in,” he says. “They want to make sure as they’re walking in that they’re impressed with the cleanliness, freshness to start and then across the market. All departments work together. Whether it’s a mango display, an avocado display, a lime display — we have it in every department. For example, when we do mangoes, we try to do the mangoes in the cut fruit stations and then take it over to the aqua frescas. We have ceviche with mangoes. So, we try to cross merchandise with all the departments in the store.”
Vallarta also sources fresh fruits and vegetables designed to appeal to a highly discerning shopper.
Olguin says Hispanic shoppers judge a store on its ability to deliver a handful of core items at the highest quality level. Cilantro is one of those items, as are cucumbers, avocados, onions and tomatoes.
“If you take the top 15 items which drive 80% of your sales in the produce department and out of those 15 items, you’ve got your top five Hispanic staples, which are cucumber, the avocado, the onion, and the Roma tomato, which is the No. 1 category,” he says. “You’ve got to make sure that you’re using an extra-large tomato, that you’re using a 36 size hass avocado.
“We ripen our own avocados, and you can go into [Vallarta stores] any day of the week and get yourself a ripe, football avocado,” he says. “Out of those five items, we make sure that they’re going to keep coming back for those core items and then on top of that, make sure that we sprinkle in other items of interest, whether that’s a new herb, some fruits or other specialties in the department.”
Produce is also heavily featured in the meat department at Vallarta Supermarkets in packages that contain both meat or poultry and vegetables.
“One other interesting thing about that [combo] package … is that you’ve not only got the authenticity, but it didn’t feel like price gouging,” says Parker of a recent visit to a Vallarta store. “A lot of folks in the retail business use convenience with a tremendous markup. This felt like a value and that deepened its [appeal]. You are much more likely to get someone not just to buy because the two were packaged together and adjacent and easy.”
It’s also culturally connected, says Villalonga, which is particularly important with Hispanic Gen Z and millennial shoppers.
“The cultural connection of knowing you have all the ingredients you’re going to need that your grandma would have used and you just put it together and it takes less time, less effort, and less trying to remember the original [recipe], is such a culturally aligned value proposition,” she says. “That is meeting the customer where they are.”
Offering a mix of culturally relevant cuisine and authenticity is also key.
“Everybody wants to be connected to what matters to them,” says Villalonga. “This is a population that is highly nostalgic just as much as discerning. They’re very, very intentional about health and well-being, but also open to new concepts, new ideas and new combinations that have a resemblance of home.
“If your outreach strategy for Hispanics is translating a flyer or having a Cinco de Mayo [display] or a little corner relegated in the back with mango with salt, that’s not meeting the shopper where they are,” she continues. “It is very important to understand that today’s Hispanic community is highly multicultural. We are the most multicultural group you will find.”
At Vallarta stores, Olguin says this year, multicultural relevance has meant going big with Central American produce.
For years, Vallarta Supermarkets relegated Central American produce to a quiet, low-movement specialty section. But this year, it decided it was time to go deep. Recognizing the power of multicultural relevance, the grocer transformed these products into a main attraction. By building out a Direct Store Delivery (DSD) system and partnering with vendors to create captivating in-store displays, Olguin and his team completely revitalized the category. The results have been a gamechanger.
As Olguin puts it, “It’s incredible what you can do with those items.”
Merchandising that Moves the Needle
When it comes to building produce displays that not only wow, but drive purchase, Brian Dey, retail and merchandising innovations manager for Four Seasons Produce, says it all starts with the “four P’s” — product, placement, price and promotion.
From a visual standpoint, Dey says what produce merchandisers, directors and managers are doing is painting pictures with fruits and vegetables. Merchandising is a visual art, as consumers buy with their eyes.
“Today’s consumer wants an experience,” he says. “They want to throw away the shopping list and the shopping trip, and they want the shopping experience, and creative merchandising — big bold, fresh displays of fresh produce is a driver to get product into the cart.”
For Dey, effective merchandising is about “creating theater” and driving impulse sales through memorable experiences. Size isn’t the metric for success; impact is. Take a recent Hatch chili promotion in Nashville. Instead of building massive displays, the stores roasted fresh chilis right in the parking lot. The aroma and spectacle transformed a routine grocery run for bread or apples into an interactive, sensory event that stopped customers in their tracks and pushed them to try something new.
Sharing a photo of a banana and plantain display under a tree design, Dey says merchandising that attracts attention can also be simple.
“I know it sounds very basic and simple, but this is the kind of thing that’s going to attract attention,” he says. “What’s the first thing that everyone saw in this picture? You see the tree. How many trees do you see in a produce department usually? Zero. Automatically simply by visual design, you’re walking over to display to see what’s actually underneath the tree. And that is where the magic happens.”
Villalonga recommends aligning this type of display with QR codes that tell the story of the growers and where the produce came from as a way of sparking a deeper connection that continues to drive sales even after the customer has left the store.
Dey also firmly believes that produce merchandising shouldn’t be confined to a single department, but rather cross-merchandised throughout the entire store to increase grocery basket sizes. By strategically placing items like avocados in the chip aisle or near the front registers using specialized bins and racks, retailers can trigger lucrative impulse purchases. This cross-promotional strategy not only captures immediate sales but often drives customers back to the produce aisle to grab complementary items like tomatoes, onions and jalapeños.
Culturally Relevant Brand Building
To drive growth with Hispanic shoppers, Villalonga emphasizes that retailers must stop treating multicultural marketing as a standalone effort and instead embed cultural insights into the core of their brand and strategy.
“Seventy-seven percent of Hispanic shoppers in the U.S. believe that brands do not understand them,” she says. “That is three in every four shoppers feels misread and invisible to you, yet they still are purchasing products. Imagine the potential, the unclaimed opportunity.
“We really need to come up to understand who our consumers are, but also start seeing produce as brands,” she continues. “I think that the great success of Avocados From Mexico is that they have behaved as a brand. And the moment you understand your products as such, your perspective, your strategy and your growth are going to change for good.”
