A new 25-pound carton for Washington state's famed Red Wing variety of onions is finding good reception from high-end foodservice customers, according to Bill (Sweet Willie) Brownfield of Sweet Clover Produce.

From his Walla Walla, WA, office, Mr. Brownfield told The Produce News that the new carton provides better protection for the onions, and in addition to the Red Wings grown by Grigg & Sons in Quincy, WA, the box will be used to ship sweets and yellows.

Increasing customer demand spurred by the success of its non-stop unit train with guaranteed fifth-morning arrival from Washington state to upstate New York has prompted Railex LLC to add a second weekly unit train, which is scheduled to make its maiden voyage on Feb. 9 and arrive late at night on Feb. 15

Railex, a division of ADS Management LLC, operates the 55-car unit trains year round from two state-of-the-art, freight-forward distribution terminals in Wallula, WA, and Rotterdam, NY.

Jarrod Snider, the national account manager for Frontera Produce in Dallas, has multiple perspectives on the produce industry.

As a cattle rancher, the 30-year-old runs a business, Progressive Genetics, in Waxahachie, TX, with his father, Charles Snider. The father-and-son operation raises and promotes purebred cattle through exhibitions, annual production sales and the incorporation of such technologies as embryo transfer and artificial insemination.

The Hass Avocado Board is continuing a tradition it established several years ago of targeting the Super Bowl as a time for heavy avocado promotions in step with the Super Bowl being one of the highest-consumption days for avocados.

In fact, the board estimated that consumers would eat 49.5 million pounds of Hass avocados during this year's Super Bowl.

Debbie Bookil, store manager of FoodMaxx at 1845 Countryside Lane in Turlock, CA, has been named Save Mart Supermarket's manager of the year.

Ms. Bookil was presented with the company's Nicholas J. Tocco Award at Save Mart's annual management appreciation dinner held recently in Modesto, CA. This is the first time in the 14 years of this award that a woman has been the recipient.

The award was created in honor of the late Nicholas J. Tocco, co-founder of Save Mart Supermarkets.

TRAVER, CA -- Knowing the Scattaglia name, one might expect that the newly formed Scattaglia Growers & Shippers LLC, here, will be a major shipper of stone fruit. After all, Louis Scattaglia, managing partner of SGS, is an owner of Scattaglia Farms in Littlerock, CA, a 30-year-old farming operation that produces more than 1 million boxes of stone fruit that will be marketed through SGS in addition to at least another 1.5 million boxes of California stone fruit from a small number of sizable growers.