A Brand New Crop

By Richard Turcsik

As branded items take root in produce, they are changing how the department is marketed and merchandised.

Good grief! Halloween is just around the corner, but how's a kid to know if he is picking a good, quality pumpkin or an inferior one grown by some blockhead? He can rest assured if it's a Charlie Brown pumpkin. Just in time for the 40th anniversary of It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Hinkle Produce has branded its pumpkins under the Charlie Brown label through a licensing agreement with United Features Syndicate, which owns the Peanuts characters trademark. Hinkle is merchandising them through cardboard containers called Pumpkin Patch Bins.

"Who wouldn't want to buy a Charlie Brown-stickered pumpkin?" asks Dan Hinkle, owner of the Cissna Park, Ill. operation, which farms 1,000 acres of pumpkins. "Being able to buy a Peanuts character-stickered pumpkin out of a Pumpkin Patch bin is a great promotional tool. Young and old alike know Charlie Brown, and where does he go to get his pumpkin? He goes to the pumpkin patch. Retailers can increase sales this Halloween by targeting kids, the future shoppers of tomorrow."

Marketers say that by promoting branded produce in all forms, retailers can increase sales the other 364 days of the year, too.

"A strong branding program can result in consistently higher returns for the retailer due to the loyalty built over time with the consumer," says Suzanne Wolter, director of marketing at Rainier Fruit Co. in Selah, Wash. "This can result in higher FOB and ROI to the grower. A branding program is considered a contract with the consumer whereby you build expectations in their mind of a consistent product that represents high quality. A grower must be prepared to deliver this consistency day in and day out in order to have a successful brand."

Adds Seth Pemsler, vice president, retail merchandising, at the Eagle, Idaho-based Idaho Potato Commission, "Branding within the produce industry continues to grow in importance, and shippers continue to expand their branded offerings. Retailers continue to look for more branded items because it offers that reaffirmation of quality, comfort, knowledge and experience to the consumer."

"Over the last five years we've seen this new injection of brand and branding," says Glenn Llopis, president of Glenn Llopis & Associates, an Irvine, Calif., consulting firm, and managing director of Anaheim, Calif.-based Luna Rossa Corp. "Brands in produce had been something of an anomaly because in the past there were the historical brands like Sunkist and Dole, however, there are also brands that aren't brands in the classical sense but are there because that was the name of the packing house that didn't know of any other way to go to market than to put their name on a box and ship it."

One of the most classic brand names in produce, dating almost to the era when the modern supermarket was created, is Chiquita. It was introduced in 1944, along with the Miss Chiquita character and that famous jingle. The Chiquita label has been expanded beyond bananas to a cornucopia of fresh fruits, including pineapple, grapes and melons.

"We've now expanded Chiquita to fresh-cut fruit, like our Chiquita Fruit Bites, which are sliced apples packaged in bags that are a good item to put in a kid's lunchbox," says Michael R. Mitchell, director, corporate communications, at Chiquita Brands International, Inc. in Cincinnati.

But don't expect to see Chiquita green salads anytime soon. "We acquired Fresh Express last year, and we use the Fresh Express brand in salads," Mitchell explains. "When we acquired Fresh Express, we learned through our research that while the Chiquita brand works very well with fruit, Fresh Express is very strong with consumers in salad. We didn't want to mess with the brand equity at Fresh Express, so we have not branded salads with the Chiquita name."

Mitchell says market research shows U.S. stores selling Chiquita move about 22% more bananas than stores showcasing alternative brands. "In Europe, they typically sell more than one brand of bananas in a retail outlet, and we see Chiquita versus other brands in the same location. We're able to achieve a price premium because consumers value our brand," he says.

Consumers also value brands that have been in the grocery aisles for decades. That is why names such as Birds Eye and Green Giant have become hits in the produce case.

"Green Giant is a brand that is recognized by 96% of American consumers, and it tells the consumer at a glance what they can expect when they buy that product," says Tom Remick, chief operating officer of Minneapolis-based Sholl Group, which markets the Green Giant Fresh brand under license from General Mills, owner of the canned and frozen business. "Green Giant Fresh stands for good, consistent quality and represents safe and wholesome foods that they know they can trust."

That trust is exemplified by the quality control behind the brand. "Green Giant has a rigorous food-quality and safety program," Remick says. "It includes an annual Green Giant inspection that we do ourselves of the manufacturing facility, the fields where the product is grown, as well as an annual third-party audit. We also have an 800 consumer-response number and a Web site that consumers can access and get a response."

BRAND VS. PRIVATE LABEL
Some retailers are using Green Giant as their predominant produce label. "Sweet Bay [Kash 'n Karry] has decided to take on a Green Giant program," says Pemsler. "They are offering as many Green Giant produce items as possible so they can brand their department, as opposed to having a private label Sweet Bay brand. In the past you never would have seen that."

Pemsler says an increasing number of retailers are expanding their private label produce, especially for commodity items like potatoes. "The Safeways, Albertsons and Krogers of the world continue to focus in broad scale on private label, and that is extending into the produce area and potatoes," he says.

Historically, when it came to potatoes, retailers tended to shop around and buy whichever brand was cheapest. "You'd see different labels in the grocery store all the time, and sometimes you'd even see two different labels as they switched from one to the other," Pemsler says. "But they are finding the importance of brand does cross into that category, and one way of maintaining that flexibility is to go to private label because it affords them the opportunity to have a consistent label yet change shippers if they choose to, based on price."

Private label branding may be fine for commodity products, but when it comes to specialty and niche items, the power of a brand can kick sales and awareness into overdrive. Take Melissa's. Named after the founder's infant daughter to hawk a line of baby vegetables, the brand today encompasses more than 1,000 items, with new ones being added all the time, like the Melissa's Organics line.

"When the Melissa's brand was brought over to the organic category, it spoke for a premium product," says Robert S. Schueller, assistant marketing director at Los Angeles-based World Variety Produce, which does the marketing. "We happen to be the largest variety organic supplier in the country, but organics is still in itself a specialty item; you can't go into every single store and find organics."  The company's newest brand is Melissa's Good Life Food, for organic produce complements.

Schueller says Melissa's offers several benefits over loose bulk items. "The brand is perceived by most retailers as a premium product, with larger-sizing fruits and vegetables, great shelf life and lower shrink," he says. "But probably the worst stereotype we face is the premium price because of those benefits. We have a quality-control standard in regard to all of the products that go through our warehouse because we are a national distributor.

"You'll find us in most produce departments, and our products are unique," Schueller says. "In fact, with many of our products we might be one of only a few branded produce items out there beyond the bulk product."

Another advantage of Melissa's is that its label serves as an educational tool. "Given the room, our label includes information like description, nutritional information, recipe, a coupon, serving suggestions, an 800 number to call for more recipes and serving suggestions, and our Web addre