Changing face of summer fruit marketing

Does “summer fruit” exist when there are no seasons?

I recently asked the LinkedIn Fresh Produce Discussion Group about how the marketing of “summer fruit” has changed in the last 20 years.

The question: What is the biggest way that marketing of “summer fruit” has changed compared to 10 or 20 years ago? How are retail and consumer expectations different than a generation ago?

John Pandol, director of special projects for Delano, Calif.-based Pandol Bros., said consumer expectations have changed.

“If the consumer expectation is that all products are available at all times and equally good quality (the category management model), the term ‘summer fruit’ and other references to seasonality are irrelevant and some nostalgic concept of the distant past,” Pandol said.

At the same time, Pandol points out that all seasons are not equal.

“But if fruit is always in season, but some seasons are better than others,  consumption should be concentrated in certain periods,” he said. “One retailer told me they stock peaches 52 weeks a year and 60% of their annual sales happened in 7 weeks. Ergo, true summer fruit.”

Another commenter said that the urgency of marketing summer fruits does not have the same feel as decades ago.

“One of my early advertising clients (1980s) was the California Tree Fruit Agreement, a cooperative marketing California peaches, plums, nectarines and bartlett pears,” said Douglas Hough, a California-based creative artist.

“Client spent nearly their entire national consumer and trade ad budget (of several million dollars) between late May through mid-September with messages that California summer fruit season had arrived, was at peak, or would soon be over,” he said. “Ads communicated a sense of urgency associated with the seasonality of California summer fruits — ‘enjoy them at their very best.’ We don’t see anything like that now.”

As growing seasons and varieties extend the availability of fresh produce, trade and consumer ads no longer communicate the sense of urgency of the California summer fruit season.

Steve Lutz, senior vice president of insights and innovation for Category Partners, said some fruits have ascended the charts of consumer popularity while others have dropped.

“Anecdotally, I think every one of us know how difficult to do (it) is to get a high-quality nectarine or peach out of a retail store,” Lutz said, which likely has contributed to lower sales at retail.

Stone fruit can look good at the store but not deliver good taste when eaten at home.

“You have got a category where the ability to survive the distribution chain is resulting in propagation of fruits that aren’t necessarily the best eating, that don’t have the best eating qualities,” he said.

Another factor that raises the stakes for stone fruit growers, and growers of all fruit, is the number of choices consumers have, from apples, grapes, berries, high-flavor watermelon varieties, cherries and mandarins, not to mention Southern Hemisphere supply that fills supply gaps.

“You look at the expansion of blueberries in just the last six or seven years; we used to buy blueberries in six-ounce clamshells and now you buy them a pound or two pounds at a time,” Lutz said.

At the same time, he said good stone fruit producers are now responding to consumer dissatisfaction with efforts to modify their orchards so the selections that come to market will please consumers.

“It is a long (process); growers hate cutting down trees, so the conversion process is long.”