Tudor: 2015-16 apple season is one of rising stars
Tudor: 2015-16 apple season is one of rising stars
The current apple season is one that producers, retailers and consumers can feel jazzed about. “This is the time of the year the apple category has the most choices,” said Andy Tudor, director of business development for Rainier Fruit Co. “Not only are we selling the mainline varieties in good volumes, but it has also become the season of the rising stars.”
The marketplace atmosphere charged up in November as Rainier began to move its exclusive variety, Junami.
“We expected the season to last eight weeks. But consumer response to flavor of Junami was so great, we sold out in five weeks,” he told The Produce News. “We launch Lady Alice in late December and expect to have supplies through April. We are also shipping other rising stars such as Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, Jazz and a full manifest of organic apples. There are other good apple choices for the consumer such as Ambrosia and Opal that we do not handle.”
Now that data for volume and fruit size are quantified, Tudor said Rainier is fine-tuning its category plans for key retail accounts.
“Most of these plans were actually laid out last summer, some over eight months ago,” he explained. “The retail business continues to evolve and become more demanding and complex. This requires a greater commitment to planning. We hold ourselves responsible for our customer’s success.”
Communications Manager Erin Smith said Rainier continues to provide a digital presence for consumers, which is both engaging and informational.
“As such, our content ranges from harvest updates and farm footage to simple, yet creative recipe and entertaining ideas,” she said. “It is easy for us to take our close connection with our fruit for granted. So it’s a focus of ours to take a step back and look at our industry with fresh eyes. We encourage our consumer audience to interact with us which enables us to curate and create content we believe will be most relevant to them.”
