Wada Farms is a family-owned farming operation that is celebrating its 80th year in business in 2023. What began with 160 acres of potatoes has turned into one of America’s largest grower-shippers-marketers of potatoes, onions and sweet potatoes.

In 2016, Wada Farms added watermelons to its mix and what started as a niche program located in North Carolina has now become a strategic alliance of growers/partners in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South and North Carolina, Delaware, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Jersey Fresh is returning to the famous Jersey Shore this season to provide healthy snack seekers with fresh, local produce and fun Jersey Fresh swag. This has been a great campaign of promotional events allowing consumers from the tri-state area and up and down the East Coast to taste the best Jersey has to offer. The biggest question we get after they try their complimentary giveaway is, “where can I buy more?”

The 2023 Northwest cherry crop has great potential relative to crop volume and fruit size, according to Northwest Cherry Growers. It sees a potential for a crop of 19.9 million 20-pound boxes, a 50 percent increase in crop size as compared to the 13.3 million box crop in 2022

eGrocery sales for April 2023 totaled $8.2 billion, up 0.9 percent versus a year ago. Year-over-year performance varied widely across the three key segments as Delivery sales jumped 20 percent, Pickup dipped 3 percent and Ship-to-Home plunged 19 percent, according to the latest Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey.

US Foods is acquiring Renzi Foodservice, a broadline distributor located in Watertown, NY. The acquisition, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2023, is the first for the company since April 2020 and the first under CEO Dave Flitman’s leadership. It will allow US Foods to further expand its reach into central upstate New York, where the company does not have a distribution center.

At the National Watermelon Promotion Board, promotional opportunities at retail include in-store, digital and social media marketing components, providing customer reach for product and nutrition education as an extension to the brick-and-mortar element that is coming back into focus.

Providing accurate and knowledgeable product information is a path to purchase opportunity, according to Juliemar Rosado, director of retail and international marketing at the NWPB.