The record-setting heat dome in the West in March has pushed California’s cherry season to its earliest start, says Chris Zanobini, executive director of the California Cherry Board.
Zanobini says the season should begin in late April and end the third week of May.
“We’re expecting we won’t have any production after Memorial Day,” he says. “Really, the cherry season is going to be the last week of April through the third and a half week of May.”
He says the record heat, which was about 20°F to 30°F above average, created a compressed bloom throughout the Golden State.
“Bakersfield all the way up to essentially Sacramento bloomed at the same time,” he says. “It had a very quick bloom, so pretty much everything is going to be harvesting at the same time.”
Zanobini says this early start will likely challenge the state’s cherry logistics.
“It’s going to put a lot of pressure on the packing facilities,” he says.
And he says this early cherry season means the state’s growers will miss out on the post-Memorial Day sales. But there is a bright spot with the season ending before June, he points out.
“The upside to being early is we won’t have any overlap with Northwest,” he says.
As for whether consumers are thinking “cherries” in early April, he says the warm temperatures have consumers thinking summer.
“We were high 80s last week and then, rain on March 31, and April 1 and April 2 we’ll be in the 80s again,” he says. “So, consumers in California were prepared with the weather.”
But he says it’s not just preparing consumers for an early season; it’s also preparing retailers who buy on a calendar basis.
“I think the real challenge there is to make sure that they get that message that we need to move things up several weeks from what we typically do,” he says. “Because we’re Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, and that’ll be the bulk of the volume.”
And while this year, Memorial Day will mark the end of harvest for California cherry growers, he says in a typical season it’s the sweet spot for typically the bulk of the cherries coming out of the Golden State. And while there won’t be production after Memorial Day, depending on how the season goes, Zanobini says he suspects the state will still ship some cherries in that first week of June.
“When we’re talking about the crop, it’s much earlier than normal,” he says. “The majority of our production is in May, between May 5 and Memorial Day. We will continue to ship probably into the first week of June.”
As for now, California Cherries and the state’s growers are working with retailers on promotions, merchandising and bigger displays to get a jump on the volume coming early.
“Getting bigger displays and a higher return on square foot will help maybe drive some of the retail patterns,” he says.
And it’s also working with the export market, too, to think about cherries early. Zanobini says Canada is a big market as well as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Mexico and more.
“That first part of May is when we really look for activity,” he says.
And while the season may be early, and there’s a few more weeks till the start of harvest, Zanobini says there is a really great bright spot that retailers and consumers can look forward to.
“The quality is looking exceptional,” he says. “We don’t actually set a crop number, but it looks like we will have a good crop on the trees and that potentially will size very nicely.”
