I was snacking on a slice of sweet late-June watermelon at my desk when Russ T. Blade peeked around the side of my monitor. “Rusty,” as regular readers know, is the miniature, imaginary produce manager who appears occasionally to talk shop.
Rusty: Don’t you just love this time of year? Those melons getting sweeter each day.
Me: And how. I plucked this sweet gem from a display just yesterday, even though …
Rusty: Even though, what? Let’s hear the criticism, produce aisle boy.
Me: Not being critical. It’s just that, well, we all have a vision of ideal produce stock conditions: everything freshly rotated, stocked to a nice visual level, neat, detailed — that sort of thing. Yesterday’s produce department shopping was a far cry from that.
Rusty: Yeah, summertime. We arrive early, hustle to get set up, hustle even more to keep up stock conditions. But it’s an inexact science. Where are you going with this?
Me: OK, well, the cut watermelon was fresh and all, but it was piled up. You know, stacked! You don’t stack cut melons.
Rusty: Wanna bet? Well, not intentionally anyway. Suppose you have just a few extras in your cart? Are you really gonna take a few back? No, and I suspect you also would gently place a few on top. Know why?
Me: Yeah, yeah. Because on a hot summer day by the time you walk away, you’ll sell a few chunks and then you can return in a few minutes to rearrange, nice and neat in one level, like it should be. Productivity.
Rusty: That’s a good bingo. In the heat of summer sales, there’s a certain amount of what I call slight overstocking. I don’t mean piling ripe stone fruit 10 layers deep, but cheating and stocking one extra level? That’s normal, bub.
Me: I know. I did it myself — not just with stone fruit but also with bananas, grapes and tomatoes, even with many of these being extra-fragile items. When slammed or working short-staffed, we all pushed these boundaries just a bit, right? We’re thinking: “One more layer isn’t going to hurt anything. It’ll help me catch up.”
Rusty: It’s called a reality check. Some guys referred to this as “Pile and smile” or “Pile it high and watch it fly” — or my favorite: “Pile it high and sell it cheap!” The reality being, a produce clerk sets their time and lists their priorities. They have a lot of real estate to cover managing hundreds of SKUs and keeping things rotated, clean, culled and neatly stocked.
Me: I know, the reality is that when up against pressures and time constraints, it’s typically acceptable to go that one extra layer. It’s not ideal, but it’s OK to (gently) pour out a case of lemons or limes onto a display, for example, providing that you handle the items gently and cull any problem fruit in the process, leveling and straightening as you move on to the next task.
Rusty: Very few items fall into that category. But yeah, experienced hands know the reality rules and never dump product and never mishandle fresh produce. That’s just a lot of shrink just waiting to happen. Experience teaches us what we can gently toss to a fellow stocker in a teamwork task, like whole melons or bagged spuds, and what we absolutely cannot manhandle or overstock.
Me: I’d say that it’s long-standing experience. We still need to insist that new produce clerks handle product correctly, with care. Speed comes later, and regular training helps refine things.
Rusty: Shortcuts or compromises are rarely the answer. But sometimes, well, it happens.
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.
