For the past decade, California Giant has sponsored its own competitive cycling team called California Giant Cycling. This year, “we have partnered with a couple of our cycling sponsors” on the consumer sweepstakes, Ms. Jewell told The Produce News March 5. Specialized Bicycle Components and Clif Bar & Co. have both donated some of their products to include in the “consumer prize packs that we will be giving away every week” as part of a new promotion.

“As Spring rolls across the country toward the end of March ... the demand for fresh berries will be on the rise.” California Giant berry Farms in Watsonville, CA, “uses this annual opportunity to capture the consumer’s attention to their brand by launching fun interactive promotions to celebrate the season. This year California Giant welcomes Spring with ‘A Breath of Fresh Berries’ sweepstakes and messaging that will stretch through the month of April as berry season intensifies,” stated a company press release.

The California Giant cycling team. (Photo courtesy of California Giant Berry Farms)“Many consumers across the country are still digging out of the snow,” but they are “looking for that springtime air and sweet smell of fresh berries in the produce department,” the release stated. “California Giant Berry Farms plans to capture the consumer’s attention as they step outside and begin to enjoy the start of spring with fun activities that involve friends and family and hopefully a little sunshine.”

The national sweepstakes “will drive consumer engagement, brand awareness and continue to associate California Giant berries with a healthy lifestyle. Each week during the month of April California Giant Berry Farms will give away an activity-themed prize pack to a lucky winner chosen randomly from the entries received either through social media networks, their website or from scanning the QR code on each berry package,” the release stated. The company will feature consumer-submitted photos on its website and through social media.

“This is a great way to help our loyal consumers get out of the winter doldrums and start thinking about getting outside and enjoying the spring weather,” Cindy Jewell, director of marketing, said in the release.

California Giant has lined up many similar promotions for the 2013 season to connect with consumers and increase both sales and brand loyalty for the complete line of retail customers’ fresh berries.

California Giant recently held its annual camp for its cycling team, she said. ”We bring them into the office and they spend three days here in town,” Among other activities, the team members go through an orientation and learn “their job as part of our marketing team.”

The company’s umbrella marketing message this year is “Why California Giant,” Ms. Jewell said. That theme developed from customers who asked that question. “We are going to spend our whole year this year with our trade partners and with our consumers answering that question and really getting behind the brand and the people behind the brand and the programs that we have in place.

The answers to the question are many: “It is our people, it is our passion for making sure we have the best berries out there, it is our leadership in food safety,” she said. “We are talking a lot about how we are nurturing the environment” and also, with the cycling team, promoting a healthy lifestyle. Another dimension is “our spirit of year-round giving and our philanthropic program.”

In its 2013 strawberry program, California Giant expects to have fruit available for Easter and to be going “in full stride” out of Oxnard by April, Ms. Jewell said. The harvest was just starting in Santa Maria and expected to start with light volume in Watsonville by the end of March.

In Watsonville, the company added the Monterey variety to its Albion and San Andreas berries this year and also added some blackberries in that district.

The company’s acreage is up about 10 percent, with most of the increase being in the Watsonville district.

“We are focusing a lot on food safety, traceability and quality,” Ms. Jewell said. “We are adding item-level traceability this year to all of our strawberries coming from California, which is a huge undertaking. We have been running a small pilot program for the last couple of years” to be sure that “once we go full scale with it, it is a program that we can really depend on being 100-percent accurate.”

To enhance quality control, she said, “we are actually adding people on the ground in each facility” who will function as quality-control inspectors on each ranch to make sure, “before it ever leaves the ranch, that it meets our quality specifications,” she said.