Earlier this year, Pear Bureau Northwest announced that President and CEO Kevin Moffitt will retire from the bureau after 35 years with the nonprofit marketing organization. In this episode of the “Tip of the Iceberg” podcast, Moffitt shared how a career that started in bananas led to his role at the bureau, his favorite memories and more.
Moffitt said he started his produce marketing career with Dole in California, focusing on banana ripening. Then it was on to the East Coast to test fresh-cut lettuce and vegetables and then fresh-cut trials of pineapple. He also worked for Sun Sweet Prunes, Sun Made Raisins and Diamond and gained some experience in international marketing.
He found his path in pears when Terry Elwell, who at the time worked in marketing for the Washington Apple Commission, said the Portland, Ore.-based pear bureau wanted to find someone for an international marketing role. Moffitt has been with the bureau ever since.
He said he used his banana ripening knowledge to complete handling information on pears.
“I actually was the first one to pull together all of the research that had been done on pair ripening and find out where the gaps were and what else we needed to do and actually created a pair handling manual with ripening instructions,” he said.
When asked what makes pears so unique, Moffitt talked about the different varieties of pears and how well they pair — pun intended — with different types of food from sandwiches to snacks to smoothies and desserts.
“I think the unique side of pears is the versatility, and there’s so many different ways that it could be used,” he said. “We have a lot of varieties out there that can be used. Some are a little bit firmer — they’re better for baking — and some are softer they could be used in sauces. When pears are getting to be a little riper, you can use them in cooking or in sauces or smoothies. You can use it from start to finish when it’s firmer all the way to the end, and I feel that that really is a unique aspect of pears.”
Moffitt said he’s excited to see that half of pear consumers are under 45 years old and that they like to experiment with flavors and varieties, which bodes well for the future of the pear industry.
“I tell my team, ‘Don’t go where the trends are. Go where the trends will be,’” he said.
He said the bureau is focusing on increasing consumption and helping consumers understand when pears are ripe, because depending on the variety, it may be easy to see as with bartletts or not with d’anjou.
“A lot of produce is an impulse purchase, but pears skew even higher than most items in terms of impulse purchase,” he said. “We have to gain awareness, and we have to gain understanding of how to use them — how to tell when it’s ripe and then increasing consumption.”
Moffitt said some consumption growth came from 2-pound bags of pears, which took off in the last five years. The bureau, he said, has come up with some creative ways to help educate consumers on ripeness with QR codes on the packaging that take consumers to short-form videos of growers in the orchard.
“The other thing that we did last year that I’m pretty excited about is an augmented reality experience that came through the QR code, and when the consumers scan the code on their phone, they can see the pears swirling around on their phone virtually,” Moffitt said. “Then it talks about what to do with the pears, talks about the versatility of pears and which varieties go well on which pizza, salad, sandwiches, drinks, and then it finishes with the check-the-neck message — checking the neck for ripeness. And when it’s soft near the stem, it’s going to be ripe and ready to eat.”
To view the full episode, click on the video player above.
