Fresh Farms aims to be a one-stop shop

The goal of Rio Rico, Ariz.-based Fresh Farms is to create “one-stop shopping” for buyers, company officials say.

The 2022-23 season will be comprised of a variety of winter vegetables, including soft squashes, hard-shell squash, slicing cucumbers, English seedless cucumbers, green bell peppers, colored bell peppers, pickles, jalapeno peppers, green beans, watermelon, cantaloupes, sweet corn, roma tomatoes, eggplant and organic produce. Fresh Farms offers organic zucchini and organic table grapes. 

One-stop shopping is an important goal in light of higher freight costs and escalating fuel prices, company officials said.

Fresh Farms continues to work towards being a year-round supplier to the industry of not only fresh vegetables but also a big supplier of varietal table grapes, including patented varieties and candy varieties from Mexico, California, Peru and Chile, company officials said.

The outlook for the winter vegetable season is good, according to the company.

Prospects for crop production in the coming months look good in light of earlier rains and most recently much cooler temperatures in the growing regions, according to company officials. The start dates for a few of the company’s commodities were pushed back slightly, according to the company.

Initial projections call for cooler temperatures in Mexico’s northern and southern growing regions this winter, according to Fresh Farms.

“On the marketing side, Fresh Farms continues to be heavily driven towards the retail and food service sectors and we continue to see more contract selling to all channels including the processors,” Fresh Farms said. “Program contracting is a benefit to all parties in the supply chain to the consumer. With rising production costs on all inputs, the growers need to work on business that will deliver at the farm level. Consumers benefit as well as it helps guarantee a more stable pricing at all levels, especially with higher food costs industry wide.”

While Fresh Farms is not introducing any “new year-round” products for the 2022-23 season, the company is offering roma tomatoes this spring from Hermosillo, Mexico.

In addition, the company continues to expand its “special” packaging programs to fit the needs of retail customers. The company offers a multicolored pepper pack bag, bagged pickles, consumer pack jalapenos and sweet corn. 

The company welcomes the opportunity to pack in private label or tray wrap to meet consumer demands, Farm Fresh officials said.

One of the biggest challenges that not only the growers face but also the distributors is the current “demand,” according to the company. The daily crossings of the company’s farms in Mexico are fairly light, but since the onset of COVID-19 the industry has seen major changes in the buying patterns in all facets of the market, including retail, foodservice, wholesalers and processors, company officials said.

Still, Fresh Farms officials are optimistic about the season as communication with production has improved to have a better idea of “peaks” and “valleys,” in an effort to create more profitable patterns in the marketplace. “As responsible producers we need to work continually to not overproduce product and to have the proper amounts of production on the pipeline,” the company said.