Seen and heard at West Coast Produce Expo — Part 2

PALM DESERT, Calif. — Tamara Muruetagoiena looked across the crowd gathering and placing their colorful plates of ceviche, tacos and salads beside glasses of creamy horchata onto the round tables in the ballroom of the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa.

The keynote was about to talk about how good it is for business to better handle food waste.

“This is the sustainability event for the produce industry,” said Muruetagoiena, director of  sustainability at International Fresh Produce Association.

The Packer and PMG’s Sustainable Produce Summit on May 18 kicked off three days of events, followed by the 10th anniversary West Coast Produce Expo May 19-20. These are a few people heard from and sites we saw at the events:

At the trade show, pedestrian traffic was jammed at the Coast Tropical booth, and it didn’t take long to find out why.

George Nunez of Los Angeles-based Olympic Fruit and Vegetable with the Coast Tropical label was pouring tequila shots inside fresh jalapeños with the tops sliced off, along with freshly squeezed lime. Turns out, jalapeños are the ideal size for shooters.

Matt King of Simplified Trade shared what his company does with those attending the Sustainable Produce Summit reception, after the education sessions and keynote speech. It’s a mobile retail application that shares real-time data with unlimited business partners, and it can provide exponential increases in merchandising transparency, retail accountability and promotional sales, he said.

“When a major retail chain doesn’t know why a new product featured in a major promotion isn’t selling, we can find out what’s happening at each store, in real time,” King said. Whether because of a labor shortage or just lack of supervision and enforcement, sometimes the product isn’t even set up in the required merchandising display, he said.

Hope Barbee, vice president of Double Date Packing in Coachella, Calif., took time to explain to nonlocals how California dates grow on the palm trees and are harvested. Her company is a grower and packer, selling only what they grow, she said. Double Date has several packaging strategies, such as including two pit-free dates in one pack for a convenient snack for on-the-go. Those two-packs are then offered inside a larger multipack bag, preventing the dates from sticking together too much and getting your hands sticky.

“We use medjools — the biggest, moistest, tastiest variety,” Barbee said. “There are 649 known varieties of dates. Historically, dates were a luxury item for pharaohs, but now we can all enjoy them.”

Kassandra Cisneros shared about the 100% recycled ReadyCycle packaging for organic strawberries used at Santa Maria, Calif.-based Better Produce Inc. and its La Bella Vita label.

“It’s home-compostable and made with recycled materials. We recently added a bar across the top,” Cisneros said about the window where shoppers can see the berries.

The pickleball tournament was a blast, and so was hanging out with customers by the big pool at the resort and learning about other companies at the Sustainable Produce Summit, said Adam Ambrozy, sales development representative at wholesale software technology company Silo, based in Miami.

The company raised its Series 3 funding led by Coca-Cola a month ago, he said. “We’re growing fast. It’s cool to be part of it all,” Ambrozy said.

At West Coast Produce Expo’s trade show, Ambrozy and his Silo colleague, Noé Ramirez, got a kick out of the jalapeño-filled tequila shots handed out at the Coast Tropical booth.

“I still feel a tingling in my mouth,” Ambrozy said, smiling.