Spring is in the air and California strawberries are on supermarket shelves. There is nothing more pleasurable and exciting than seeing all those nice, colorful displays of premium California strawberries when entering supermarket produce departments. It sends a nice, warm feeling and opens the gates to the upcoming summer season.

The power-tower California strawberry display.

California’s ideal climate helps in growing 80 percent of all the strawberries in the United States almost year-round. Strawberries are one of California’s most important crops and grown by close to 700 farmers on about 35,000 acres stretching from San Diego to Monterey. That’s a whole lot of strawberries, and someone has to sell them to the consumers. All that is required is exciting enthusiasm and a retail sales floor.

This is the transition period in which to start relocating your California strawberries from the small winter section of the refrigerated rack onto an expanded display at the entrance to the produce department. This exposure will give customers an immediate visual point of interest. California strawberries usually create a friendly seasonal mood among shoppers and could even inspire them to buy more fresh produce once they’re in that springtime surrounding.

The California Strawberry Commission is one of the finest organizations in the produce industry. It has always been a big assistance to retail operations over the years and is still working as hard as ever to help increase high sales volume in the stores.

The CSC was established in 1955 as the California Strawberry Advisory Board. In 1993, it was enacted as the California Strawberry Commission, covering five major areas: food safety, production and nutrition research, trade relations, public relations and public policy. The organization has been very useful in educating produce managers as to the proper care and handling of fresh strawberries. Areas of precise temperature, storage and rotation are highly stressed in their programs as well as creative merchandising suggestions.

California strawberries play such an important role that there is also a popular California Strawberry Festival celebration each year. This year’s event will be held May 19-20 in Oxnard, CA. The activities cover arts and crafts, a strawberry tart toss, a strawberry pie-eating contest, musical entertainment and a Strawberryland with free rides for kids.

Receiving, handling, and storage

Like most other fresh produce items, California strawberries require temperature managing throughout the entire cold-chain system. Since they are highly sensitive, strawberries should always be handled with tender loving care. Upon arrival at the store, the berries should be rapidly moved into the cooler and inspected thoroughly. Remove any damaged or decayed strawberries immediately to prevent spreading to the others. Temperature in the storage cooler should be managed from 32-36 F and strawberries kept away from high air flow.

Merchandising

It’s always exciting to sell California strawberries — mainly because of the generous sales they deliver to the produce department. Strawberries are a favorite advertising item in attracting shoppers to the stores. Therefore, it is suggested that the strawberries be positioned at the entrance location leading into the produce department. For best results, the overall display should be very aggressive in order to move large amounts for those massive sales.

Display types

There are several ways to display California strawberries. Rather than in a normal display spot blended in with other items, they can easily be placed on a produce table endcap to present more exposure. The plastic clamshell packages save loads of labor, can be easily stacked and cut shrink immensely.

Euro tables are excellent units to use where they can be raised on a slant to show the bright red color and show off a massive appearance. Most Euro tables have wheels, which allows for flexibility in moving them on different angles or to other locations of the sales floor.

Another unique and dramatic eye-catching display employed for California strawberries on occasion was described as the power-tower. This display consisted of an endcap of strawberries with two columns of approximately 60 empty berry flat cartons stacked from the table endcap all the way up to the ceiling and securely fastened. The power-towers were instantly visible as customers entered the store and drew them over to the strawberries like a magnet. The display was decorated with point-of-sale material supplied by the California Strawberry Commission.

Use your own ingenuity to create different types of displays that are exciting and motivate shoppers into buying plenty of California strawberries. Check out the California Strawberry Commission website, www.calstrawberry.com, for retail material to assist with those merchandising displays — and good selling to all.

Ron Pelger is the owner of RONPROCON, a consulting firm for the produce industry, and a member of the FreshXperts consortium of produce professionals. He can be reached by phone at 775/853-7056, by e-mail at [email protected] or check his web site at www.power-produce.com.