For the past five years, The Nunes Co. Inc., based in Salinas, CA, has been ramping up its organic offerings, and as the number of SKUs in the category rise, sales continue to increase at an even faster clip.

“It remains our fastest growing category,” said Matt Seeley, vice president of marketing for the commodity-based shipper.

In the beginning, with its Foxy Organic brand, Nunes concentrated on the same core items that has made the company one of the leading grower-shippers in the vegetables industry: lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, leafy lettuces and other staple items. But as it has transitioned more land to organic production, it has now added a varied palette of items, including several that it only offers as an organic product. In fact, The Nunes Co. now sells more organic produce items than conventional produce items. Seeley said some of the smaller-volume vegetables that Nunes can now offer to its customers in the Foxy Organic brand are beets, leeks, red and green cabbage, and some of the greens such as fennel, dandelions and mustard greens. The list goes on and on and includes more than two dozen products.

He said for some of the smaller items, retailers do not necessarily carry both organic and conventional SKUs so if you can give them a steady supply of the item as an organic product that will carry the day. The Nunes executive was quick to add that organic produce at the retail level has moved well past the specialty niche in recent years.

“I don’t think there is a retailer around that doesn’t look at organic produce as just part of their mix now,” he said. “And they should because we are still experiencing double digit growth in the organic category.”

He said more products being offered certainly helps grow the category but individual items — even the core items — are showing strong growth from one sales period to the next.

Seeley said there is certainly some cannibalization of conventional sales as some people do move from conventional to organic, while others shop both categories interchangeably. “It doesn’t matter to us,” he said. “Our end game as a company is to offer the trade and consumers both conventionally and organically grown product. It’s all about choice as far as we are concerned. Some people say organic produce tastes better; others say it is better for the environment. What we say is give the consumer a choice and let the market decide. At the end of the day, our goal is to get consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables. That should be the common goal of all of us in this business.”

While organic and conventional fresh produce are often mixed in the shopper’s grocery cart, they are treated very differently at The Nunes Co. Seeley said the two categories, of course, involve different growing techniques and different land. For the high volume core commodities, such as broccoli, the production price differential is narrowing, as the company hones its growing techniques and gains experience.

Nunes also has three dedicated sales people for the organic line: Kevin Crossgrove, Brendan Bartley and Kristin Shafer.

Seeley said some retailers have dedicated buyers for their organic produce and others separate responsibilities by commodity rather than by how it is grown. But he reiterated that basically every retailer — from the deep discounters to the natural food stores to old-school conventional supermarket chains — has an organic produce department, and almost assuredly, it is registering very strong growth.