Time to get your produce department ready for Thanksgiving
The wind is beginning to shift. Can you hear it? It’s whispering “Gobble, gobble.”
The calendar indicates it’s mid-October, and I’m still wrapping up some summer projects at home. But when I duck into Home Depot or Lowe’s and see what they’re displaying — it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Grocers do this too. You can always tell what time of year is coming up when general merchandise, candy and other season-specific goods adorn the shelves weeks or even months ahead of time.
Seeing Halloween candy in September and Christmas trees right behind reminds me: It’s time for produce retailers to start thinking about Thanksgiving.
Any good produce manager starts formulating a merchandising plan well ahead of time. Thanksgiving is as big as it gets in the produce aisle. No other holiday centers solely around family, faith, and, of course, food.
Why worry about Thanksgiving this far out? Because it isn’t far at all.
The main components to consider are key holiday products, placement, merchandising extras needed, cross merchandising or tie-in plans. And, of course, the all-important labor plan for it all: setting up, prep, stocking. Still think you can just put it all together last minute? I’ve seen too many produce managers try, with substandard results.
Now’s the time to retreat to the conference room for an early-morning planning session with your store management team. Review your holiday notes from the past couple of Thanksgivings (you did keep notes on what went right, what went not-so-great, didn’t you?).
There's no place like produce for the holidays
Look at your merchandising scheme: Ensure you have enough display space for traditional favorites such as celery, potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, parsley, cranberries, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, green beans. You may need to build secondary or oversized displays to endure the heavy shopping periods.
Thanksgiving in the produce aisle requires much more preparation than usual. If you take shortcuts, it will show, and sales will suffer. Stick with your rotation, cleaning, crisping and trimming regimens for best results.
Consider scheduling an overnight shift or two during the holiday week to get a jump on receiving and putting away the heavy inbound loads. The same shifts can help tackle the trim and other prep necessary to get the produce department ready each day, such as building prominent spillover ad and secondary displays in the wee hours when there are few interruptions.
As much as possible, bulk up your daily labor schedule, too. It’s a smart investment.
Trust your ordering notes from prior holidays, too. Since the heaviest shopping occurs the last few days before the holiday, try to stay at least one day ahead on inventory and, for productivity’s sake, stock displays so that most inventory is on the sales floor and your back stock is minimal.
Don’t overlook non-ad products that sell especially well, so be prepared: this includes lots of additional herbs, wet rack garnish/relish items, mushrooms, dip/dressings and salad items; fruit staples such as grapes, berries, citrus and apples also sell well. Your own neighborhood is unique, so this should trigger those items I’ve missed.
Excellent Thanksgiving standards (enough product, labor, execution) not only make for optimal holiday results, but it also helps keep the sales momentum going. A good plan now means a lot fewer headaches later. When it’s all over, don’t forget to jot down notes, make a copy of your order guide, schedule, etc., and file these away for, you know, next year.
Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His 40 years’ experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions.
