Piled high for the holidays: Seasonal produce displays for special days  

Kellie McManus gets excited about the fall.

In early October, the produce buyer and supervisor for Canyon Market in San Francisco, starts thinking about all the fruit and vegetable merchandising possibilities that are coming her way.

First up is Halloween and her fall displays, which are featured outside the store, begin with pumpkins and hay. Using a variety of pumpkins, she builds a de facto pumpkin patch that includes baby pumpkins with painted faces and hats that she sources pre-decorated, as well as squash, gourds and decorative squash.

She also adds in some fall flowers, which are part of the produce department, making the displays look like something from a Thanksgiving table or porch. These displays, she says, “make it so quaint in a little market like this.”

Inside, McManus’ produce department — the first department customers see as they enter the store — is just 5 by 25 feet, so every inch of space matters and she has to be very creative with displays. McManus takes advantage of a Metro rack and often uses it for holiday exhibits as she can do vertical presentations and cross merchandise items from other departments, such as stock for Thanksgiving gravy. She also makes great use of props such as baskets and wooden crates.

As the season rolls into Thanksgiving she highlights yams, potatoes, sugar pie pumpkins for baking, exotic mushrooms like chanterelles or morels, celery, pearl onions and cipollini onions. And there’s a lot of colorful fruit: Persimmons, pomegranates, pears, apples and citrus, including mandarins and kumquats.

She’ll feature short and sweet signage, sometimes as simple as: ‘Roast this,’ or ‘Saute this.’ Because, she says, “people want to get in and out and I want to make it very clear.” Doing this, she adds, “turns the vegetables into a new, exciting product.”

Sometimes she’ll feature longer signage, explaining what a produce item is, what protein to serve it with or how to cook it. “I’m creating a farmers market experience,” she said.

December holiday merchandising is similar to Thanksgiving displays, McManus says, though she’ll feature fir tree branches with snowflakes for a wintry look, rather than holiday-specific.

And for New Year’s, she likes to merchandise ham hocks from the meat department on ice, with packages of black-eyed peas and bunches of collard greens in the same display to make it easier for customers to pick up their end-of-year meal.

She’s also featured “cleansing” displays for the new year with items like ginger for inflammation; turmeric for digestion; and even burdock for detoxing. “It’s something fun and gets your mind clear for the year,” she said.

Time savers

K-VA-T Food Stores, Abingdon, Va., operates 147 retail outlets in the Southeast and also creates front porch displays that tie in with the floral department. These include apple cider, caramel apples and candied apples.

For Thanksgiving, the stores shift to vegetables like sweet potatoes, celery, asparagus and what the stores call “shortcuts” – prepped, cut and cleaned vegetables and fruits that are ready to use.

“We find that often when people are in a hurry, especially around the holidays, they’re looking for a short cut,” said Bucky Slagle, vice president of produce and floral. These might also be grouped ready-to-prepare, such as diced onion and celery for use in a stuffing mix.

New Seasons Market, which has approximately 20 stores in Portland, Ore., Vancouver, Wash., and San Jose, Calif., goes for the wow factor with produce displays in the weeks approaching the winter holidays.

“We go bigger and try to show a much stronger presence in things like mushrooms and apples, because they’re what people look for in the Northwest,” said Produce Buyer Jeff Fairchild. As he moves into Christmas, the focus is on citrus: Navel oranges and satsumas. “We’re looking to create a festive feel.”

He also features pricier produce such as asparagus or berries, because customers are more willing to splurge for the holidays, he says.

Fairchild is also a fan of cross-merchandising. For Thanksgiving, for example, he’ll feature yams with brown sugar and marshmallows.

Combo platters

K-VA-T-owned Food City’s produce departments do a brisk business in party trays around the holidays. These come in 64-, 32-, 16- and 8-ounce clamshells and are ready to serve with a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables.

Color is important for holiday displays, says Slagle, and he capitalizes on this with tables “piled high” with citrus and fruit baskets, which are popular gifts in the fourth quarter.

Harmons, West Valley City, Utah, capitalizes on party trays for Halloween parties in October. These include a variety of sliced apples and may also include caramel apples, too. While the grocer offers other fruit and vegetable trays, the apple trays predominate, said Robert Seegmiller, Harmons’ fresh produce sales director. Seegmiller typically merchandises these in a cooler at the store entrance or in a lead display going into the produce department.

Other trays become more popular towards Thanksgiving and Christmas, such as a hummus tray or a guacamole tray with cut carrot sticks, celery sticks, broccoli and cauliflower florets and cucumber, and these are merchandised in front of the stores’ prep kitchens. The vegetables are packaged separately to the dips, but typically purchased together.

“They do especially well at the holidays when people’s time is so valuable,” said Seegmiller.