SPARTA, MI — Two new added-value packs are being offered this fall by Riveridge Produce Marketing Inc., which is based here.

Riveridge President Don Armock said Aug. 7 that brand names for the products were still undecided.

But one of the new items will be a clamshell containing two different apple varieties. For now, Riveridge is calling this a “twofer” pack.

Options for the twofer pack “could be a combination of a Red Delicious and a Gala or a couple regional varieties. Or a regional with mainline variety. We are hoping to catch consumers’ attention with that and offer a couple variations geared toward people who buy apples,” Armock said.

The second product will make it easy for consumers to learn how to bake apple pies.

Don Armock “Research shows that there is, of course, less of a percentage of consumers today who bake, compared to previous generations,” Armock said. In many cases, baking for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays is becoming a lost art, so Riveridge is packaging apple varieties — or a combination of apple varieties — “that lend themselves to apple pies. The package will have directions for those people with no experience in peeling apples and slicing them in portions for pies.” The packages will have QR codes for more information on crust preparation through the baking process.

“This is a bit of an attempt to add something to the category for some consumers who come in stores and just don’t have that baking experience,” he said.

This summer Riveridge was presenting “a couple of trial packages” to consumer focus groups to test a couple of different approaches to the apple pie baking promotion.

Also along the food preparation line, Riveridge is launching a program to pack 10-pound poly bags with apple varieties for juicing “or that lend themselves to smoothies. With the package we convey the package and offer directions on how to make an apple smoothie. There will be reference to our website to gain more information.”

Armock noted that with the bumper crop of Michigan apples in 2013, it is “a year to make ourselves take a different approach to strictly packaging apples. We will have apples that — I don’t want say they will be economical — but they will be priced right, so that lends itself” to these packaging promotions.

Riveridge will be show the products at the Produce Marketing Association convention in New Orleans in October. But, the products will be rolled out in early September.

Armock said Riveridge is among the many Michigan apple shippers that has “done a lot of work in [packinghouses] and storages because we had time and knew successively larger crops in the future.” The time was made available because traditional industry activity ended with an April 2012 freeze that virtually wiped out Michigan’s 2012 apple crop.

With the aggressive, forward-thinking mentality since, “All the talk is of bricks and mortar. But the single biggest asset a company has is people,” Armock said. In the last year, Riveridge sought “any number of activities” to enhance its employees’ understanding of their own industry.

“An easy example is that we loaded up a number of packing plant managers, their quality-control people and growers. They went to different production areas and visited other industry members to explore what and how they do things as a training approach to specific things we look at.” Among operational studies in other growing areas was frost mitigation and packinghouse equipment. “In some cases some of our personnel worked with people in other plants for a week at a time, or more, to get experiences they wouldn’t have had otherwise.”