Right now, the talk in Florida is about weather. The state's fresh producers experienced a relatively mild winter, and crops in the Sunshine State are progressing with good growing conditions reported.

Stater Bros. Supermarkets has been rated as the "best place to shop for groceries" among full-service supermarket chains in Southern California in the May 2014 issue of a leading national consumer magazine.

Stater Bros. was rated No. 1 in Southern California for low prices and highly rated for employee courtesy, meat and produce quality, cleanliness and checkout speed.

The ratings were based on the responses of the magazine's readers about their experiences at 55 leading U.S. supermarket chains, warehouse stores, and limited assortment stores.

Sun Coast Farms, based in Santa Maria, CA, has launched a new website that includes many of the company's new attributes.

The new site now contains all food-safety audits along with updated product information for Sun Coast's California and Texas operations.

"We felt we needed a new look to go along with company changes that reflects some of growth initiatives planned for this year," Steve Poindexter, chief executive officer of Sun Coast Farms, said in a press release.

The Michigan Apple Committee has hired Edwin (Cam) Harrington of Douglasville, GA, as its new account manager. He will facilitate the sale of Michigan apples in retail stores. Mike Bardon of Grand Ledge, MI, also works for MAC in this capacity.

King Fresh Produce LLC, based in Dinuba, CA, recently announced Rene Millburn as its new public relations director. Millburn will be based in the company’s Midwest office, located just outside Kansas City, MO.

Pacific AgPak, a packaging company that provides clamshells and other packaging materials and related services to the strawberry industry, has several new “packaging strategies” that the company has either introduced recently or will soon launch, according to President Dave Baum.

One of these is a high cube packaging program, designed to increase the amount of fruit that can be loaded on a truck per cubic foot of trailer space by 33 percent.