This article appears in the May-June issue of PMG magazine. Keep an eye out for your copy in the coming weeks.
Highlights
- Summer and cherries could be partners in a word-association game, but there’s demand for the small stone fruit other times of year, too.
- A benefit to carrying cherries beyond summer is that it keeps cherries on shoppers’ minds throughout the year.
- Another way to keep cherries on the radar outside the sunny months is to remind people that they can freeze cherries to enjoy during any season. This also ensures shoppers don’t worry about not being able to eat all their cherries before they go bad.
Retailers generally carry cherries whenever they are available, though the Northwest season is obviously the pinnacle of volume and consumer interest.
“When the Northwest season starts, that’s really kind of full throttle for us,” said Josh Rector, produce category manager for Springdale, Ark.-based Harps Food Stores.“That’s when we get behind it. That’s when the displays start going up and that’s also when you start to see that price point get a little bit lower.
“The Chilean season then around Christmas, we’ll bring them in,” Rector said. “They don’t have as much of a demand as they do in the summertime, and the retail’s a little bit higher obviously with them having to be shipped over here, but we still bring them in and we still promote them and display them and let people know that we have cherries in the winter and that they’re not just a summertime item.”
One key to selling more cherries throughout the year, Rector added, is to remind people they can freeze them to enjoy during the months when the fruit is not available fresh.
Related: Retailers talk packaging preferences for cherries
Michael Schutt, senior category manager for produce and floral for West Sacramento, Calif.-based Raley’s, described the various regions from which Raley’s sources beginning in the spring.
“Cherries have such a positive impact to top-line sales that we start as early as April in the southernmost growing region of California, then slowly (and) systematically making our way up the valley, finally arriving at the Sacramento River Delta,” Schutt said. “As (Fourth of July) approaches we head to Oregon to get the best fruit from Columbia River Basin before jumping the river and heading north to Wenatchee.
“But even that isn’t the end because, after taking all the fruit from both the valley and hill orchards, we jump the border to get a passport stamp and finish our season in the Okanagan Valley of Canada,” Schutt said. “We do this all in (the) quest to offer our customers the best fresh produce available and will continue to follow the sun around the planet in that pursuit.”
Related: Building anticipation for cherries among store teams and shoppers
Jared Waterfield, marketing director for Norfolk, Va.-based Military Produce Group, said the commissaries his company works with often begin carrying cherries when California’s central valley deal starts in May. Washington follows, then British Columbia through August. From November into February, the stores source cherries from Chile.
“This helps keep cherries on consumers’ minds and maintains good demand for the fruit on the retail side,” Waterfield said.
