The Fresh Produce & Floral Council held its annual FPFC Expo, Cultivating a Healthy Future, on Thursday, April 27. Before the expo, FPFC kicked off the festivities with its Exclusive Night Out at the House of Blues in Anaheim, CA. Laughter filled the room, a live DJ brought the beats and the night was capped with cheers to good friends and anticipation for the show.

Photo: Prescott Leyba of Live Oak Farms, flanked by Samantha Hough, Reece Stevenson and Courtney Ludford of Wonderful Citrus.

TORONTO — The Canadian Produce Marketing Association cut the ribbon to open its 2023 convention and trade show April 26, here, where more than 300 exhibitors featured their products and services amid a busting trade show floor. Traffic remained strong throughout the second day before attendees headed to the annual banquet, which brought the event to a close.

Stop & Shop expanded availability of Flashfood, a digital marketplace that significantly reduces food waste at the retail level by connecting consumers with discounted food nearing its best by date, across over 30 of its New Jersey stores.

Flavor 1st Growers & Packers, with more than eight generations of history behind it, knows what it takes to be successful in the produce industry. The company grows and packs more than 30 different varieties of produce — all tracked from field-to-fork using state-of-the-art distribution programs, labeling and procedures.

And 2023 has seen the company’s successes continue.

As the harvest season begins in the Coachella region, Live Oak Farms, a fourth-generation farming company, hired pepper industry veteran Pete Aiello as vice president of pepper programs and Prescott Leyba as the vice president of pepper sales to support and enhance the sales and marketing of the newly expanded program to include longer availability and additional organic production.

Live Oak Farms will expand its organic pepper production from LeGrand and Coachella into the Central Coast region to extend the California growing season.

Divine Flavor, a Nogales, AZ-based produce distributor and grower, announced that produce industry veteran Patrick Cortes has been named to a key role in the company’s development and strategic team.

Cortes joins the produce brand as the director of business development and strategic planning, where his principal duties will center on sustainable growth among the Divine Flavor customer base and its grower alliance.