When strawberries are in abundance, promotions are paramount to keeping volume moving. But when a shipper has sudden surges in volume, not all customers are capable of responding quickly enough to the unexpected increase in supply.

“The problem,” said Louis Ivanovich, vice president of West Lake Fresh, a Watsonville, CA-based brokerage specializing in strawberries year-round, “is that through the process of consolidation, so many buying entities “have gotten so large that even though they would like to, they just can’t respond quickly enough.”

But in farming, things can change very quickly, he said.

Weather and other factors may cause unexpected shortages, but they may also create unanticipated spikes in production. When that happens, “being able to offer a particular retailer a special buy and have them take advantage of it is great,” he said. It not only provides a value to that buyer’s customer base but it also helps the grower who finds himself with an unexpected surplus.

Unfortunately, “it is getting harder and harder to find” customers who can respond quickly to such opportunities, Ivanovich said. But at West Lake Fresh, “we are fortunate that we have a few of those players still in our arsenal here to help the growers.”

West Lake Fresh is “happy to be able to continue to work with some really good shipper partners that supply our company and have for many years,” he said. “They all have unforeseen circumstances that come along.” At times, they may have “volume that all of a sudden pops up, and they need help doing impromptu promotions, and we are fortunate that we have some retail business that is very responsive” and capable of turning promotions on and turning volume up “within just a few days.”

That provides value to the retailer’s consumer base and to the shippers as well, he said.

At West Lake Fresh, “our strength is matching the fruit to the client’s requirements,” Ivanovich said. “We want to get real specific with them.” Whether it is a retail client or a foodservice client, “we want to assess what they are looking for and constantly try to get feedback from them to make decisions on what product we pick up for them, understanding that certain parts of the country have different expectations than others.”

In addition to working with customers to understand and meet their needs, he said, West Lake Fresh works with its growers “in the varietal decisions they are making down the road.”

There are some strawberry varieties that are being produced or that are available for production that can “really make a difference, volume-wise,” to the growers,” Ivanovich said. Part of the service the company provides is to introduce some of the emerging varieties to customers and familiarize them with “what is to come.”

A grower “is going to grow what will make money,” he said. “If there is a variety that has extraordinary taste” and another is “very, very close to it” with regard to taste but provides “half again as much yield,” the grower will go with the higher-yield variety.

Farm gate prices “across the board in produce haven’t changed drastically” for years, but “the input costs for growers are climbing every year … and the only way they can make up for that is through yields,” he saaid. Therefore, West Lake Fresh “is trying to educate our customer base on new varieties that are coming up, that they are going to be seeing more of, and trying to get everybody comfortable with that on both sides of the equation.”