La Bonanza to elevate its presence at IFPA Global Show
La Bonanza to elevate its presence at IFPA Global Show
La Bonanza Avocados is looking to gain more visibility in the highly competitive avocado category, and at this year’s IFPA Global Produce & Floral Show in Anaheim, CA, the company is looking to make its presence known by adding some interactive excitement to its booth.
Valeria Villaseñor, vice president of La Bonanza, which is headquartered in Mexico and has a U.S. office in Mission, TX, said it becomes harder each year to stand out at the convention because every booth has a wow factor as companies compete for the attention of buyers.
Part of La Bonanza’s wow factor this year will be samples of its delicious guacamole and dips, including its classic guacamole based on a Mexican recipe, as well as new dessert applications with avocados as a key ingredient. Villaseñor said the avocado-based desserts feature chocolate and passion fruit, and both received great response when La Bonanza first sampled them at the IFPA Foodservice Conference in July.
La Bonanza is adding a new wow factor at its booth this year in the hope of creating a buzz and drawing more traffic to its booth.
“We realized we need to up our game to compete, and so we’re adding an interactive element to our booth,” she said. “It will still be the same size booth as we have had in the past, but we’ll have games for visitors that are fun, engaging and informative so that they can learn about La Bonanza and the advantages of working with us.”
Among those advantages, according to Villaseñor, is the fact that La Bonanza is a vertically integrated company, “so we control every aspect of our products, from the orchards to the packinghouse and processing plant, and all the way to the store shelf. We feel like we can offer a better product overall as a result.”
She added that La Bonanza is focused on providing only clean and healthy products, using all-natural ingredients. “Our dips are 90 percent avocados, compared to some others that use additives to reduce the cost since real avocados are expensive,” she said.
Villaseñor said La Bonanza will have key executives in attendance at the IFPA show, including Patrick McGinnis, who recently joined the company as national director of sales, bringing with him 20 years of experience in grocery and product development. She said his hiring coincides with the company’s goal of increasing its retail presence.
“With Patrick’s leadership, we will be launching into grocery and natural channels across the U.S. in 2026,” said Villaseñor. “Our goals are to grow strategically in retail while maintaining reliability and quality, and to continue to innovate while being a long-term, trusted partner for retailers.”
Regarding the upcoming Mexican avocado season, Villaseñor said rains this summer in Michoacan have brought optimism for a good harvest with better sizing.
“We have had a prolonged drought in the growing areas the last couple of seasons, and that has affected fruit sizing,” she said, explaining that the first 90 days on the tree dictates fruit size.
“If we get rain during that period, fruit will continue to grow, but if not then fruit will stop growing and we get more smaller sizes,” said Villaseñor.
She said the growing season begins in July and so far La Bonanza is seeing larger fruit sizes, which are favored by the U.S. retail market.
“While we are seeing 36s and 40s, we will still have smaller sizes up to 60s, and that is a good mix to supply our different customers in retail, foodservice and processing,” she said. “In fact, there is a lot of competition for the smaller sizes, because they are used more by foodservice and processing, and for bagged avocados at retail. Plus, Mexico has a large domestic market that prefers the smaller sizes, so it can be tough to have enough for everyone.
“We are excited about our growth and look forward to making connections at the upcoming IFPA convention,” she added.
