Archive for 'Produce'

Still don’t know how serious consumers take their produce shopping these days?  Can’t get your head around whether organic produce offers work? Well, in the absence of intelligent news reporting in this country, we have to revert to this other place where English is spoken, the good US of A.

When a shopping reporter (or was that reporting shopper?) spends his time inspecting the produce displays of Walmart and compares them with those of his local icon Whole Foods, you know America is on the move. And where America leads (having followed the UK), we in turn follow.  Eventually. To a point.  But nevertheless.

Especially when the themes sound  familiar.  Locally sourced, organically grown, attractively merchandised, survival of the small grower.  Now, where have we heard this before?

What comes to your mind when you see a vehicle like this?  Brightly coloured, two front bits and no rear end, a re-engineered middle and a ruddy great banana on the top of the roof?

I don’t know about you, but what comes to my mind is that this very cleverly put together promotional vehicle reflects the state of our produce retail  industry.

The two front bits represent respectively the supermarkets – Foodstuffs (New World, Pak N’ Save) at one end and Progressive (Countdown/Wooolworths/Foodtown)  at the other.  The ‘bit in the middle’ is the rest of the retail industry – the urban green grocers, the fruit shops at the edge of town, the gate sellers, the farmers markets, the opportunitists at the roadside selling produce from their vans, the office fruit bowl stockists and the internet ‘box of stuff’ vendors.

There are several questions that play on my mind in connection with this state of the retail industry:

• How big are the two front bits, i.e., the supermarket produce share, really?
• What is a realistic level for the supermarket share of produce sales before it disturbs the industry value chain equilibrium?
• To what extent is ‘the middle bit’ dependent upon the two ‘engine drivers’ for its well being as opposed to being in control of its own destiny?
• How will the local New Zealand model be impacted by international trends in the next five years?

Let me start with this observation.

Fruit and vegetable ranges stocked in supermarkets are continuing to reduce, driven by item based shrink and profit consideration at both merchandise and buying office level. Buyers and category managers whose performance is judged by the profitability of narrow product categories are not prepared to gamble by stocking niche products.  Store staff with insufficient training are not best placed to sell non-mainstream produce.  So if I am looking for whitloof, fennel and red currants, I know that I will not find those in the supermarkets.

This thread will be continued over the next few weeks and comments are as always welcome.

Last week I attended a New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority (HEA) meeting.  Its full title was HEA Chairs Meeting and Exporter Workshop.  The meeting had a dual purpose.  The morning was spent discussing the findings and recommendations of HEA’s 5-year Statutory Review Report.  The afternoon consisted of workshops on effective produce export market development techniques and capitalising on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) opportunity with China.

I walked away with several learnings from the day and the concluding dinner. These were:
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Who needs a Marketing Manager? Some people clearly do. On any given Monday or Wednesday, the NZ Herald’s career section carries several advertisements for marketing professionals. Today as I write is no exception. A stationery shop retail chain is looking for a Marketing Manager who “comes and makes history”. The ad goes on to state that “this full scope role includes coordinating our enthusiastic advertising team, research, compliance, and feeding market intelligence to our team of Category Managers.”

A local University is also on the hunt for a Marketing Director, who “will be responsible for the strategic ownership of the University’s brand and image.” A fertilizer company is keen to have a bob each way and is looking for a Sales and Marketing Manager with “strong strategic and commercial acumen combined with the ability to establish effective business partnerships and alliances.”
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