Archive for 'Produce'

Our table at the 20th anniversary celebration of United Fresh last week. Sara, the Kiwi from Iraq; Rosie, the Kiwi with Chinese heritage and the extended digit belonging to an Italian Kiwi, coz he felt he needed to make a few comments about green asparagus just as Shirner, the Kiwi from South Africa, took the photo. Morale: Italians do anything to get into a photo.

There has a lot of talk in the media recently, and in homes too I’m sure, about the escalating food prices and the price of fresh produce in particular.

Here are just two of the recent articles, one from the NZ Herald and one from the Business Desk of One News.  In essence, fresh produce gets the blame for the increase in the weekly shop, and we can’t have high fresh fruit and vegetable prices now, can we?  Apparently fresh produce, along with potable water and petrol, are a basic human right and shouldn’t be expensive… especially in this time of rising obesity and the associated spiraling health costs.

What a burden to place upon the humble tomato and broccoli!

The thing is, and I think the media has missed the point again, there is nothing more natural than the cycle of bud, blossom, fruit, harvest.  When it is ready – eat it.  It is an irrefutable law of nature; there are some things we humans can not alter – try though we might.

But it is the 21st Century! We can have anything, anytime!

Well, yes – yes you can.  If you are prepared to pay for it.

When you buy your fresh produce item out of its season, then you are paying a premium for the logistics required to make it available to you.  The flip side of that statement is this: your local grower, being part of this 21st Century global market, will send his produce off shore if he knows he’ll make a better return on it.

Which brings us to that other law: the one about price being driven by supply and demand.

Fresh produce is particularly sensitive to this law.  For example: in season, with a good volume crop, strawberry prices quite naturally will be around the $2 to $3/punnet level.  And that volume crop will sell – there’s a demand because Kiwis love their strawberries, especially at Christmas.  But if the volume available is reduced thanks to bad weather, the price will rise and the market will bear it because the demand is there.  To a point.  As we have seen from the media, fresh produce prices aren’t “allowed” to be too high.  But as I’ve said before – why shouldn’t the grower get a return for his efforts?  Every other business owner is in the business of making a profit, why is the grower excluded from that basic business tenet?

Whilst this article from The Guardian has some good points, it still assumes that people have access/ time/ skills to do the things it suggests.  Where does that leave the high-density urban dweller?

Back at the supermarket, wondering why she can’t buy local tomatoes at a decent price anymore…

A few weeks ago I explored the Wynyard Quarter – one of the new areas of Auckland’s waterfront which has been revitalised and transformed for the public to enjoy. While wandering around I came across this customised fruit cart which immediately caught my eye.

This cart is no different to a typical roadside fruit seller – it’s the same mechanics and employs the same  principle – but this ingenious seller is not just selling fruit but has taken it one step further with the added value of selling fresh fruit kebabs. On top of that, this fruit cart also has brilliant marketing – a name we can relate to, eye-catching graphics and advertising and a website clearly displayed. That sort of stuff allows us to put value on fruit.

I observed a steady stream of customers, which shows it’s still easy to sell fruit and it doesn’t matter where you sell fruit you’ll always find someone who wants to buy it. Especially when it’s quality fruit at a quality outlet. I would definitely buy from here!

One of my team happens to watch TV3′s reality series “Under The Grill”.  This is a show which has a UK born Aussie celebrity chef – Sean Connelly - racing to build, staff, supply etc a brand new restaurant at SkyCity in 100 days ready for the Rugby World Cup.  Tuesday  night’s episode (23 August – episode 2), among other things, featured Sean working on sourcing his fresh produce – so understandably, I got told about it.

I was told two things in particular:

The chef went out to Pukekohe  and visited a potato field where John Wilcox dug up some Agria for him to take as a sample.  Sean then proceeded to double fry them in duck fat on the side of the field(!) to test that they would be good enough for his restaurant to use (apparently these chips are a signature item for Sean).  It was a great advert for Wilcox – the field looked great, the potatoes and the resulting chips did too.

He also went to T&G’s Mt Wellington wholesale floor, where a produce buyer showed him around the produce on offer.  The place looked very neat and tidy, and I wonder what differences Sean noticed from the wholesale markets in Australia.  The produce buyer got Sean to try some tamarillos – saying they were a New Zealand native (I think not, maybe he meant to say favourite), but they weren’t to his taste – not such a good advert for tamarillos.

So exposure by way of product placement in television and movies can happen even in NZ…

I wonder if Wilcox have noticed any increase in sales that week?

At the recent HortNZ Conference….

THREE HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE...

Coffee breaks are a great venue for catching up with colleagues and acquaintances.  Debbie Hewitt, HortNZ Director from Hawkes Bay and Andrew Fenton, HortNZ President and celery enthusiast wanted to have a look at some of my Chinese supermarket photos.  And thanks to the iPad, we did not have to troop off somewhere to assemble a laptop (so dated), but were able to attend to the matter on the spot.
A couple of further thoughts on the matter of technology. I am writing this entry from Vanuatu, taking advantage of the hotel’s hot spot. It’s breakfast time – well, in theory, anyway. The holiday makers around me are noisily munching their cereal. The business travellers amongst us are causing a traffic jam, because the iPads have invaded the breakfast table; we occupy the table for longer, the coffee sure tastes good, and I am not going to give up my seat because the hot spot is the most reliable RIGHT HERE. So there.
Did I mention that the iPad was only released last year, that I have never seen anything like this behaviour before and that all the other iPads in action around me are firmly in the hands of Chinese travellers??