Produce departments across the country are getting antsy and about to hit the reset button
You know — the big remerchandising event that is synonymous with fall and back to school. The only issue with this is, summer isn’t over yet. Not quite.
Oh, I knew lots of produce managers who got the jump on fall merchandising and started moving displays around en masse. They were promoting fall fare front and center, with extra display space and emphasis on apples, hard squashes, pomegranates, pumpkins. Meanwhile, just a few feet outside, the temperature was still rather warm.
Nobody likes a fall set more than this produce scribe. I can just smell the spiced apple cider and the aromatic dillweed for pickling, and I can just taste the gooey candy apples and other goodies at the local Friday-night football games.
However, summer isn’t officially over until Sept. 22.
And as far as summer produce fare goes, it extends well into October. Think on this for a moment. September summer stone fruit and late-season berries shift to the Northwest, and with this, some of the finest fruit quality and promotable volume.
I recall managing an early October peach ad once, sourced from Symms Fruit Ranch (SSS label) out of Idaho, and the 33-store chain in Southern California I bought for moved 15 straight loads in just a few days. Gorgeous, top-quality, full-blush fruit with nice sizing. Summer’s over? Not so fast.
And that’s just one example. My message is simple: Push summer fare as long as you can.
Summer volume means elevated sales. Sales drives everything. One friend used to say that sales make the wheels on the produce bus go round and round. He was right. Sales means extra labor and more gross profit, and it certainly helps to make up for a lot of other shortcomings around the department.
Sure, your September new-crop apples, local fare, pears, grapes, hard squashes and pumpkins will be rolling in and adding to the sales rings. And you should absolutely work these into your merchandising scheme as well to push volume. But consider these as your items which are still on deck, to use a baseball term, that will soon take center stage.
The same late-summer thought process goes for cantaloupes, honeydew, variety melons and watermelon. If anything is peak maturity and flavor now, this is the category. Promote these, whole and cut, as if it were mid-July.
In reality, retail traffic in September does slow down, especially considering that vacations are wrapped up and the kids are back in school. So, the ideal time to really push the last-gasp summer marketing is on the weekends. September has four weekends to promote the summer fresh produce goods (five weekends if you can stretch it into early October).
As a result, keeping an emphasis on marketing summer produce deep into September will reward you with tens of thousands per week, if managed well.
Then, and only then, should you schedule your major fall reset into more of the fall merchandising look. It’s a fun and rewarding reset, getting into fall produce merchandising, but it’s always a bit sad to bid the summer farewell.
But that’s the beauty of produce. It will come around full circle next May, when you start all over again.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for two decades.
