'Fresh Trends at Retail' panel reveals what your retailers are thinking: Part 1

PALM DESERT, Calif. — What do retailers, especially produce retailers, really think about all the trends and challenges of today? What's working, what's not and what do their shoppers want? What do they want from suppliers?

Hosted by The Packer and PMG, West Coast Produce Expo's “Fresh Trends at Retail” expert panel chat was moderated by Amy Sowder, editor of Produce Market Guide and retail and education editor of The Packer.

Four retail executives shared the latest consumer and shopping trends impacting fresh produce today:

• Rachel Shemirani: Senior vice president at Barons Market, San Diego, a second-generation family member running the company.
• Shawn Peery: Vice president of produce at Albertsons Cos., Boise, Idaho, who's been with the company more than 27 years.
• Shonna Williams: Vice president of produce at Cardenas Markets, Ontario, Calif.
• Caitlin Tierney: Senior director of produce for local and innovation at Sprouts Farmers Market, Phoenix.

TOPIC: On online shopping with curbside pickup and delivery

Williams: "Cardenas was one of the last independent markets to step into the curbside pickup and delivery shopping models, like with Instacart and DoorDash. What we’re seeing more of in Cardenas and our Hispanic customers, is they like to touch their products. They like to pick their fruit, and they like tons of it. I know a lot of other retailers, they really did very well with online shopping."

Tierney: “It's continuing to grow. I think our clientele is very business savvy. So, they work long hours, and they also care about what they consume. So, they're very fresh-forward.

Our online sales have continuously grown, and we're trying to adapt to that market. We're partnering up with Instacart." (Sprouts had years of working with Amazon.) “Going on our own, we’ve had some growing pains. I’m trying to help on the innovation side. I worked for FreshDirect, which is the largest online retailer in New York City, prior to Amazon being the massive retailer they are today. What we found was that we had a five-star rating. For instance, we all know that Mexico has that rainy season, and their limes, they don’t look that good. They’ve got the scales and all that, and we put it in at one star. Obviously, people are still going to want limes, but we’re going to set their expectations for what their delivery will be. Same time, there's peach season that we’re right front and center in — awesome, amazing flavored fruit. We're putting them in as five star. We're putting them up the top of the page to make sure that you grab the experience. So, I'm trying to adapt that into the Sprouts model as well.

How do you create that impulse experience online? I think that's really what probably all of us are trying, to just struggle with and trying to adapt to, ‘hey, you got to have this amazing experience,’ but it's on the bottom of the page, or if you don't click ‘peaches,’ you're never going to know that this amazing product is out there. So, I think we're all trying to adapt and create this in store experience online.”

TOPIC: Prepackaged, convenience, grab-and-go items

Williams: "On the produce side, it's really not a grab-and-go experience for us. Our customers still are going for the value. For grab-and-go, you have that up-charge. Our customers are very savvy, and so they really are into cutting their fruits."

Peery: “During the pandemic, we saw very few quick trips. As people are going out again, heading to movies, shows, games. In order to do this, they’re looking for quick trips and convenience items. Customers are looking for those again. Even during the pandemic, we saw tremendous growth in those convenience items as well. We’re really looking into brand innovation now. Customers are looking for new favorites. So, to keep growing that segment, the key is new innovation that can continue on that path. Also, customers want a meal solution that's convenient on time, so ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat or even cooked, such as our ready meals today. Those offer a great solution for customers to get the products they want.

Shemirani: "Grab-and-go for us before the pandemic was just an exploding category. In produce, we have grab-and-go fruit cups. It's so successful that we do it in-house, and we cut fruit probably every couple of hours. We've dedicated a lot of time and energy and we also do grab-and-go salads that we premade; we sell them at a value and they feed about two to three people. And so, we think we found that sweet spot of doing that prepared grab-and-go food and offering it as a value.

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Another important thing is merchandising. The way our stores are set up, there is smaller square footage. We used to have a 10-minute shopping experience, and part of that is being very crafty with our merchandising, so we do barrels of ice with fruit cups. We do barrels right by the registers, so that is a huge, huge draw for customers. We do it by our salad bar, by our pre-made salads, by our kombucha. Just kind of breaking the wall between the store manager and the produce manager has been instrumental for us to support the produce department. Before the pandemic, the produce department was just that really cool, fresh, shiny area that the rest of the store, we didn't know anything about; well, that didn't work throughout the pandemic. So, breaking that communication between the store manager and the produce manager was instrumental in supporting an increase in sales."

TOPIC: Cultivating loyal customers and attracting new customers

Tierney: “Through the pandemic, we sort of changed our model and went without flyers, which is a very bold move. Through that, we realized that the model of our ad was not what's going to get people in our stores. It was building an experience within the stores.”

Sprouts built one and two-week national events. “And it had really amazing signage packages with dye-cut, A-frame of amazing experience stores to get contests. So they built these, quite frankly, 'Willy Wonka'-style displays, that just awes you that they can do that with labor these days. So it entices our customer, like, ‘if someone's going to put this much innovation and power and experience behind something, it must be fabulous. I got to pick it up, even though I wasn't going here for blueberries or tropicals.’ It’s so we can entice them with different varieties, different experiences. We sell tropicals like I don't think any other retailer does. And if you think about your shopping list, how many people on your shopping list have even the basic tropical items, like pineapple, on there every single day? Maybe Easter, maybe Thanksgiving or something like that, but it's not on there every day. But if you have an amazing display with the right signage package, the right retail and then sample it beside it, it entices the customer to build that basket and now add that pineapple to it.”

Shemirani: “We changed things up a bit in middle of a pandemic, where we started buying from three large distributors and started getting produce six days a week, truck to shelf, and that really changed everything for us. Not only did it reduce spoilage, but our customers were able to get that fresher quality product. All of us here, we are very concerned with in-store customer experience. It's what we are very intentional about. We want that experience to follow that customer home, so that the apple stays fresh and stays good for a while, and through word of mouth that has really helped us. We've stopped doing weekly ads as well. You can really rely on word of mouth and other forms of media to help, but just changing that and getting the truck-to-shelf product on there, everybody wins."

TOPIC: Top three trends and why consumers love them

Williams: "Convenience is the No. 1 trend, especially for non-value-focused shoppers. For people who just don’t have the time to go shopping, convenience is huge. Another is these new tropicals that have come in, based on the number of mangoes and avocados that Cardenas sells. Just having the right product at the right ripeness is what drives these new trends. People are foodies now, so I feel like the customers are out there looking for new recipes, new ideas, new flavors, new things."

Peery: “Flavor and eating experience; then product-consumer relationships; and meal planning.

1. The eating experience the customer gets from the product at home is redefining the value equation. Customers have to be delighted when they get the product home. It's not just about price. It's not just about quality in-store, it’s the eating experience at home.”

Albertsons commissioned a 2021 study that showed: “81% of consumers attribute the product experience as how to define a good value, and 74% of customers in that same survey defined price and quality. So eating experience trumps price and quality. It's the most important thing for driving produce consumption. And it's so key for us, as growers, retailers, wholesalers to be making sure that the product we are delivering our customers has a great eating experience. If you think about a display of grapes, and a customer buys that bag of grapes, that bag of grapes is responsible for grape sales for the next four to six weeks, because if they get disappointed, they will exit the category move to something else. So, it's very, very important that we, really as an industry, focus on flavor and quality and dynamic customer that will improve produce consumption.

2. So the next one is product consumer relationships. What does that mean? Customers want to know more about their food today. Where does it come from? Where is it growing? Who grew it? What is it packaged in? There are so many things that customers are looking at today. They use social media, they want to have a relationship with food, the growers and where it comes from. So really, it is redefining what customers look at. You have to think about, what is your story? Where does it come from and how we communicate with customers.

3. Meal planning is so essential today. When you think about pre-pandemic, most customers didn't know what they're having for dinner. During the pandemic, they learned how to cook, how to delight their families and they're so excited about sharing that experience with their family, so they're planning their meals today. So, the more we can do with recipes, the more we can do with meal solutions in the stores, such as such a grab-and-go items, those are really, really important."

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Shemirani: "The pandemic just hit the gas pedal on grab-and-go items. And also organic. We’re selling more organic produce than we ever have. And also anything that we can get locally, so local crops, and you put proper signage on it that says ‘local’ on it, and people really gravitate towards that. Also, that relationship between the product manager and the customer really is essential because they're educating the customer."

TOPIC: Local and/or organic: Who wins?

Caitlin: “Both are essential. We have extreme, high-value customers for organics. We also just recently created a local team that's done an amazing job executing local in-store experiences to the point where we’re up 112% this year versus last year on local products. You have to tell the story about the company, through images. We’re actually adjusting our marketing campaign to be more simplistic because we realized that people aren’t going to stand there reading a whole paragraph, and it’s also not that easy to shop around the people that reading the whole paragraph. In Georgia, we had an organic Amish farmer, so we had an organic veggie patch that that had great, great signage. It had an in-store experience sampling, great displays and we were able to combine the two, and farm was getting 150 uptick in those commodities. So, if you can combine the two, I think you're going to really sell the product."