Specialty items create variety for consumers
Choice always seemed to be a byword with conventional produce, but there are plenty of product options available to organic consumers as well, marketers say.
Perhaps even conventional produce consumers didn’t know there was so much choice available to them, said Steve Lutz, senior strategist with Wenatchee, Wash.-based fruit grower-shipper CMI Orchards.
“Now with 19 different apple and pear varieties/brands in the Daisy Girl Organics suite, CMI Orchards has created a turnkey program for retailers to implement a full organic pouch bag program,” Lutz said, noting that his company in the past year has added premium varieties and brands including Ambrosia, Kanzi, Kiku and RosaLynn organic apples.
Data from The Nielsen Co. show 2-pound pouch bags are the fastest-growing segment of the organic apple and pear business, and that trend should continue, Lutz said.
Roger Pepperl, marketing director for Wenatchee-based Stemilt Growers LLC, says the Piñata — which Stemilt company grows organically and conventionally — gives his company its own specialty apple variety.
“About 35% are organic,” he said. “There’s high demand on those. Some retailers, organics are the only Piñatas they carry.”
Stemilt soon will add the Rave to its apple lineup and grows a firm, high-sugar Skylar Rae cherry, Pepperl said.
“We’re going to fill that niche of people looking for new items that organic shoppers want,” Pepperl said.
Porterville, Calif.-based Homegrown Farms has a specialty nectarine called the Dulce Vita, said Scott Mabs, CEO.
Specialties offer consumers some choices outside the standard “nuts-and-bolts organic” that are usually promoted, Mabs said.
“There’s a lot of consumer demand for what’s happening, and you can move volumes of that (specialty) product,” Mabs said.
“In the past, it becomes such a small demand of what I call a niche-of-a-niche market, you can hardly do it.”
On the organic vegetable side, Salinas, Calif.-based Mann Packing Co. recently has added cauliflower florets and green beans to its organic product line, said Jacob Shafer, marketing and communications specialist.
“The demand for value-added veggies continues to rise, and we have focused on expanding this segment for both conventional and organic,” he said.
Los Angeles-based World Variety Produce, which markets under the Melissa’s brand, numbers kumquats, ginger, baby yams, kiwifruit and mangoes among its estimated 300-400 organic items, said Robert Schueller, director of marketing.
“We’ve always been known for pioneering new items,” he said.
“We are the largest supplier of organic kumquats and one of the few that offer them. Give it about five years, though, and we’ll have a lot of competition.”
