Apples gain a year-round feel

When it comes to selling apples, it is not your grandmother’s or even your mom’s winter selling season anymore.

With technology improving — and keeping more varieties of apples fresh during the winter months — and more international and domestic apple growers in more temperate areas of the U.S. shipping product, consumers can rest easy in their search for many types of apples during the cold winter months.

That was not always the case. As recently as a decade or so ago, many retailers said they were having a hard time finding certain types of apples during the winter months. Many added that with consumers not as interested in apples during the winter months, they narrowed their own apple selection in-store. The result, of course, was slower apple sales from just after Thanksgiving until near Easter across the country.

That has all changed thanks to the combination of factors. New technologies that allow growers to store their apples in more controlled climates and more sources for apples have made it easier for retailers to access the growing number of varieties that have flooded the marketplace. Consumer demand, thanks to these large number of varieties — there are more than three dozen popular varieties today — that satisfy so many different tastes, has also increased, causing more retailers to increase the size of their apple section during the winter months.

The best news is that suppliers say that the winter harvest is healthy and price points have stabilized, which should lead to more enthusiasm among inflation-haggard shoppers looking for the best deals on all groceries. That excitement about apples, of course, will make retailers and growers happy.

“Apples have become the backbone of the produce section for many retailers,” said Gabriela D’Arrigo, the director of sales and marketing for New York-based D’Arrigo New York, a major wholesaler in the region. “They are about the most popular product in the produce section and they can play a big role in helping to build sales, and attract customers to the store.”

Others agree. Mike Hacker, vice president of sales and marketing at Wolcott, N.Y.-based Fowler Farms, is quick to note that a broad apple selection during the dead of winter can bring more shoppers into the store at a time when store traffic — usually because of bad weather or winter doldrums — can be off a bit. “More varieties and more selection will help build more sales,” he said, stressing that suppliers and retailer need to be much more active with promotions during the winter months.

Those in-store promotions can go a long way in helping to maintain apple sales during colder months. Many industry observers say that merchants must become pro-active during the height of the winter to get consumers in the right mood to buy apples. That might be as simple as carrying a broad variety of apples and using signage and displays to make them stand out amongst other produce categories.

It might also mean getting more aggressive with packaging — including bagged apples that tend to sell better in the winter months as opposed to bulk apples that tend to sell better during the rest of the year — and pricing to help convince shoppers to include apples on their shopping lists. “It might also be the time for retailers to carry more regional apples that have been in storage,” noted D’Arrigo. “That could spark an increase in interest too.”