A photo finish at the produce forum

I like how technology plays an ever-increasing role in produce retailing. Take, for example, ad displays. Social media is chocked-full of creative fresh produce displays, including photos for PMG's Produce Artist Award Series.

I love it. Build award-worthy displays, take the shots, and wham! Share the creativity instantly online.

So much different from my supervisor days when we’d arrange for a produce manager to build an abundant produce display for an upcoming ad (usually a week or so ahead of time) in a prominent department location. I’d drive to the store with my 35mm Pentax camera and take lots of shots.

Then I’d run the film over to a particular downtown one-hour photo location, park blocks away and have them crank out 100 copies of a preferred single print. Then I’d hustle over to our print shop, where they’d staple a print to each produce marketing bulletin, which then had to be hand-placed in everyone’s mid-week mailbag at the warehouse along with other paperwork. Whew.

Half of a day burned. All so that we could demonstrate our ad display merchandising expectations.

Also from Armand: Signing for success: It's all in the details

One week, we contacted Harry, a produce manager in a relatively slow store in our chain. We wanted to include him in our process, rather than always asking the flagship produce managers (who did the majority of the special, pre-ad displays for the photos).

Harry was hesitant. “Sure,” he said. “I’d love to build the big representative (grape) display. But at regular price, I’m worried that I’ll be loaded down with inventory and unnecessary shrink.”

We told him that was understandable. And we assured him that after he built the display, he could ship back any excess product to the warehouse for full credit. Harry agreed.

The next week, all went as planned. Harry had fun building the massive grape display. He received a full pallet of product, included all the point-of-sale material, and he did a great job with lots of nice extra merchandising touches. I took the pictures and went through the ultra-slow photo step paces (which were quite fast by yesteryear’s standards).

Also from Armand: The art of the produce manager transfer

A few days later, on my way to a district produce meeting, I got a call from Harry.

“Uh, there’s no need to send back any grapes to the warehouse,” Harry said. “I left the display up for a couple of days, and a funny thing happened. I sold most of that pallet.”

In fact, Harry even had to order more product to get through the weekend. It was a curious exercise in what massive, high-quality displays can accomplish.

It just goes to show — on occasion, be aggressive. And, you know, see what happens.

Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His 40 years’ experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions.