The Reedley, CA, division of Giumarra Bros. Fruit Co. Inc., commonly called Giumarra Reedley, specializes in stone fruit, and this summer, the company is promoting its plums through a program called “Easy as Pie.”

According to a company press release, the promotion features plums packed in “Nature’s Partner”-branded two-pound zip closure pouch bags, which have a peel-off recipe label and a QR code linking to a YouTube cooking video.

In the video, Helen Krause of Reedley, CA, a retired plum grower who previously grew plums for Giumarra, shares her plum pie recipe and step-by-step easy baking techniques, according to the release.

“This new ‘Nature’s Partner’ plum promotion will lift retail plum sales by giving consumers a reason to buy plums in quantity,” Jeannine Martin, director of sales for Giumarra Reedley, said in the release. “A consumer enticed to make Mrs. Krause’s plum pie recipe will need to purchase two, two-pound bags of plums.”

The two-pound pouch bags come in a master container “that is stackable in the produce section, with a vinyl display wrap that goes around the stacked boxes,” Martin told The Produce News May 17.

Both red and black plum varieties are available in the pouch bags throughout the season, which was expected to begin early June.

The promotion will run June through September, Martin said.

According to the release, the vinyl display wrap, which can be used either with “Nature’s Partner” shipper boxes or RPCs, is reversible. One side features the plum promotion and cooking video QR code, while the other side depicts multiple stone fruit and can be used for any stone fruit from Giumarra throughout the California season.

“The dual design wrap gives the retailer merchandising flexibility and extends the life of the display materials, making it much more sustainable long term,” said Kellee Harris, western region business manager for Giumarra in the release.

“We have opened the [stone fruit] season out of Reedley here already with white peaches,” Martin said. “Quality is good, flavor is excellent, and sizing is decent.” She expected the company’s first peaches to start the week of April 21. “We are 14 days, in some fields, ahead of last year’s production.” The company’s stone fruit offerings include white flesh peaches and nectarines, yellow flesh peaches and nectarines, and both red and black varieties of plums as well as Pluots and apricots.

The program is similar in terms of acreage and varietal mix to what it has been, Martin said. “What has changed with us here” is that more and more of the fruit marketed by the company is grown under Giumarra’s own farm management. “We used to be grower-based,” she said. “Now we have more ground that we are farming ourselves” and have hired a full-time farm manager to oversee the production.

There are some significant developments in the works, in terms of new proprietary varieties of stone fruit, and three of those will be in full production this year, Martin said. One is Nature’s Royal nectarine, which comes off around mid-May. It is “a beautiful nectarine,” full color with yellow flesh.

“We also have a Nature’s Sangria nectarine that comes off about the third week of June,” she said. It is named for its Sangria-like flavor.

The third is “Sierra Sweet,” a prune plum that comes in July.

“We have a nursery that has [other] proprietary varieties that at this point are not in commercial production, but we are moving in that direction,” she said.