Joe Caldwell, vice president of Monterey Mushrooms Inc., headquartered in Watsonville, CA, said that the company’s new innovations in the past few years continue to build traction and are truly national in distribution now.

“The general update on mushroom business is that sales continue to be strong through this summer, as they were last summer,” said Caldwell. “The normal increase in demand we see every fall will put very unusual pressure on the industry’s ability to supply. Due to rising costs and flat pricing, a couple more producers went out of business this year and the industry capacity hasn’t grown enough to cover those losses plus the 25 million pound growth in annual demand we’ve seen the past several years. It takes a couple of years to add significant capacity plus a significant capital investment. I would expect to see prices move up even as the industry struggles to meet the projected demand for the holiday season.”

Monterey Mushrooms has had great consumer response to two innovations it introduced over the past few years. One is its vitamin D-enhanced product, and the other is its informative sustainable packaging.

Joe Caldwell, Sandy Quintana, Connie Allen and Shah Kazemi of Monterey Mushrooms at the PMA Foodservice Expo.“These innovations have reinforced the natural goodness of our product for consumer health as well as our planet health,” said Caldwell. “Shoppers are appreciative of the packaging plus the information on recipes and ideas for additional uses at home. The consumer education aspect of the packaging is getting as many positive reviews as the sustainability factor.”

He noted that Monterey’s fresh mushroom sales are about 60 percent retail, 35 percent foodservice operations and five percent institutional. While retail has shown a steady 4 percent to 5 percent growth for the past four years, the foodservice industry has rebounded from the recessionary dip it took in 2007-08.

Foodservice operators, Caldwell said, are finding more solutions in using fresh mushrooms than they ever have.

“These include enhanced flavor and moisture in meals, to go along with the improved nutritional and upscale image profiles,” he said. “With the popularity of the televised cooking shows, these factors are influencing the home kitchen just as well as the restaurants. The white and brown button mushrooms, including Baby Bellas and Criminis, make up 85 percent of sales, with Portabellas coming in next.”

He added that the specialty varieties are favorites of many, but still constitute less than 5 percent of the sales’ volume. Organic mushrooms continue to grow in category share but still represent a small percentage of the total.

“As much as 25 percent of our volume is now in prewashed and sliced mushrooms, with the majority of that with 100 percent of the daily value of vitamin D per serving,” said Caldwell. “This product will become the norm for the category over the next few years. We are seeing more interest in prestuffed mushrooms as more consumers are making quick serve appetizers and even vegetarian meals from them. Monterey expects to expand our offering of these products over the next year.”

Monterey has supported the Swap It or Top It promotion with social media and website placements. Caldwell believes it is a repeatable type promotion that will gain more traction every year.

“Monterey will also continue to support the Pink campaign this fall, as ongoing contributions to breast cancer research at the City of Hope continues to show promising results,” he said.