Freshway Foods will introduce a line of new summer salads at the upcoming IDDBA Dairy-Deli-Bake Conference. The new summer salads contain a broad variety of superfoods, including kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, beets and mangos.

Samples of the company’s Super Veggie Detox and 5-A-Day Plus salads will be offered at the show.

Members of the Western Watermelon Association, which include growers from California and several other Western states, donated nearly 30 tons of ice-cold watermelons last year to attendees at a Los Angeles-area watermelon festival, which was held at the Rose Bowl for the first time in the festival's 52-year history.

Doral, FL-based Vega Produce, a grower, packer and importer of a broad line of Asian and conventional fruits and vegetables, is now operating a pre-cut division called Vega Precut, which is expected to begin within the next few weeks.

Lauren Del Rosario, a staff member at Gourmet Trading Co., a Los Angeles-based distributor of fresh asparagus and blueberries, has been named to the first Fresh Produce & Floral Council apprentice program.

With an early crop of figs and a hot market, Stellar Distributing Inc. in Madeira, CA, has taken advantage of a great marketing season as it kicked off its 2014 California fig season.

The North Carolina bell pepper deal for Farm Fresh Produce, Inc. looked good May 6. Speaking by phone from Amsterdam, where he was checking a sweet potato export arrival, Steven Ceccarelli, company owner, said his pepper harvest would begin in the range of June 20-24.

Farm Fresh’s expanding napa cabbage deal was to begin around May 9 and would run through June 10, Ceccarelli said. This is a late start because of cool early spring weather.