For Frutas de Chile, competing in North American produce aisles isn’t just about battling other fruits; it’s about going toe-to-toe with processed snack brands for shelf space and consumer impulse buys.
As the Chilean cherry season gets underway in November amid early-season weather concerns in northern and central growing regions, the organization’s strategy is focusing heavily on point-of-sale engagement. Leveraging data from FMI’s Power of Produce 2026 and The Packer’s own Fresh Trends 2025 — which highlight that 9 out of 10 shoppers make unplanned produce purchases and over half prefer in-store displays to discover new items — Frutas de Chile is doubling down on interactive retail toolkits, tastings, display bins and more to convert casual shoppers into high-impact impulse buyers.
Beyond standard merchandising, the industry umbrella organization is also pursuing creative co-branding partnerships with complementary CPG brands and North American retailers to reposition fresh fruit as a fun, innovative snack rather than just traditional dessert.
In an exclusive interview with The Packer, Ignacio Caballero, managing director for Americas at Frutas de Chile, breaks down its retail partnership rollout, early-season crop conditions and how Frutas de Chile aims to protect origin integrity while scaling up brand awareness in key U.S. markets.
Frutas de Chile has voiced a clear goal to make Chilean fruit “more present at POS” across key markets in the U.S. What specific merchandising formats, digital integration or retail partner toolkits are you deploying this season to transition Chilean fruit from standard produce displays to high-impact impulse buys?
Caballero: We see a big opportunity to work with retailers to grow fruit consumption against competitors like processed snacks. There is no single recipe, but our analysis shows that being physically present at the point of sale helps consumers buy and try more fruit. According to FMI’s Power of Produce 2026, 9 in 10 shoppers end up buying fruits or vegetables they hadn’t planned to buy, and almost half do so frequently, driven by in-store merchandising and promotions.
Also, The Packer’s own Fresh Trends 2025 shows that sampling is one of the top reasons consumers try new produce, and that 54% prefer in-store displays to learn about it. We are currently meeting with many retailers to understand their strategies, and we are looking for partners to build a stronger in-store presence: tastings, display bins, screens and floor graphics. We expect to have our plan defined by early December.
Co-branding has become a powerful lever to drive brand recall for origin-based produce. How are you approaching co-branding partnerships with North American retailers or complementary CPG brands, and what boundaries do you set to ensure the Frutas de Chile umbrella brand maintains its distinct identity?
Today, we are facing major brands that [are] investing heavily to expand the processed foods market in the same segment of U.S. snacking. So, we are looking for partners who can help us increase awareness and introduce fruit to consumers in a more fun and innovative way, beyond the traditional view of fruit as dessert.
We are in conversations with several brands that share our vision and would benefit from being associated with a healthy, natural product. We expect to announce our first partnerships in the coming months, and we remain open to more.
Boundaries will be defined case by case, but one principle is clear: The Frutas de Chile value proposition must stay clear, and every co-branding partnership must complement and strengthen our vision. We also never forget that Frutas de Chile sits under a bigger umbrella — Chile’s country brand — so every partnership must reinforce what Chile stands for as an origin: quality, reliability and great flavor.
With the Chilean cherry season kicking off in November, early-season rainfall in parts of the northern and central production regions has raised concerns regarding soil saturation and fruit splitting on unprotected orchards. What is the latest crop condition report across key regions, investments helping safeguard export volume quality this year?
Weather is, and always will be, one of the biggest challenges for our industry, and this is not the first time we have faced difficult conditions. Experience is our strength. These rains were forecast months ago. As a result, growers and exporters took precautions.
Today, the industry is assessing the impacts, which — although limited so far — could result in lower export volumes, since our goal is to deliver, as we do every season, the highest-quality fruit with the best flavor to our consumers, and that is what we are working toward.
Now, we are preparing the first forecasts for cherries and stone fruit, and the second for grapes and blueberries, which will give a clearer picture of the final impact. We are confident that, as always, Chile will offer a good volume of high-quality fruit and a good season.
Beyond cherries, recent unseasonal rains and shifting spring weather patterns in central Chile have posed operational challenges across several fruit categories. Bigger picture what are you seeing across Chilean fruit and what message do you want to convey to retailers about quality and volume?
We know how to prepare for and harvest the best-quality fruit. We will share updated volumes as soon as the impact of the rains is clear. Our message to retailers is simple: Chile is committed to exporting the highest-quality fruit, we will have significant volumes in the coming months, and you can count on us as a strategic partner to grow fruit consumption.
The Global Grape Group recently launched its inaugural Global Table Grape Report, which highlighted a growing gap between global supply and demand alongside rising competition from packaged snack categories. What are the immediate key takeaways for Chilean grape growers from this report, and what is next on the Global Grape Group’s roadmap to reverse these consumption trends?
As president of the Global Grape Group, I’d say the report’s main message is that we have reached crunch time for grapes. Supply keeps growing faster than demand, and the leading exporting origin has changed hands three times in the last six years, which shows that competing only for market share no longer works.
Meanwhile, categories like chocolate and chips invest around 5 to 10% of their revenue in promotion and are growing 4 to 8% a year, and better-for-you snacks are gaining space in the snacking occasion.
Tariffs, food safety events, logistics disruptions and a strong El Niño forecast for 2026-27 are changing the rules too. Your Fresh Trends 2025 confirms the challenge: The share of consumers buying grapes fell from 63% to 56% in one year. But the frozen-grapes trend on social media also showed how fast a new snacking occasion can bring new consumers into the category.
For Chilean growers, the key takeaway is that quality and cold chain are now table stakes, not a differentiator. Grapes already have what new snack categories try to engineer: real health and real taste. We don’t need to manufacture it. We need to tell that story, together and at scale.
Next on our roadmap: growing our membership, with important new members to be announced soon; publishing more Global Grape Reports with shared data and trends; and building joint plans across origins to grow grape penetration and top-of-mind awareness. The goal is to move from fighting for share to growing the whole market.
As you step further into your leadership overseeing the Americas, how do you see the role of Chilean produce evolving in retail produce departments over the next three to five years?
We want to maintain our leadership as the largest Southern Hemisphere exporter of fresh fruit, while making high-quality Chilean fruit easier to find in more supermarkets, stores and wholesalers across the Americas. We want to work closer with retailers, learn from them and build better partnerships to reach consumers, educating them about the health benefits and the pleasure of eating fruit.
We want to differentiate Chile from other origins by adding value and to act as a catalyst for the industry, creating more opportunities by working together to grow fruit consumption so that U.S. per capita consumption, for example, reaches levels closer to Europe or Asia.
