Wegmans Shares Top Five Strategies For Pear Retailer Of The Year

Five key merchandising strategies enabled Wegmans Food Markets to increase its pear sales 6 percent during the 2014/2015 season. This lucrative pear-formance earned the 87-store chain based in Rochester, NY, the title of Pear Retailer of the Year as named by the Milwaukie, OR-headquartered Pear Bureau Northwest (PBN).

“This is the fifth year we presented this award,” said Kevin Moffitt, PBN president and chief executive at this year’s Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit. “Our four regional marketing managers submit names of retailers they think have done an exceptional job with the pear category over the season. Then, we sit down and look at a variety of checkpoints. These categories include sales performance as well as creativity, best practices in pear merchandising, and overall excellence in supporting the pear category. These practices implemented by Wegmans put the retailer at the top of pear-category performance, and we are proud to recognize the retailer’s outstanding efforts.”

Wegmans increased its pear sales by:

1. Offering conditioned pears that are ready to eat when consumers want them. “Pre-conditioned pears are what we purchase as much as we can get from our grower-partners, who share our commitment to quality. Sales are most successful when fruit is ripe,” explained category manager, Charlie Gardner.

2. Increasing impulse purchases by carrying all 10 varieties of pears — including two seasonal green pears (Bartlett and d’Anjou). “We also will carry Taylor Gold when seasonally available. In other words, offer our customers a full variety, plus organic as well as conventional,” said Gardner.

3. Carrying bagged pears for busy shoppers. “D’Anjou, Bartlett and Bosc in 3-pound bags are offered as our family-pack, value-priced pears. We are also experimenting with Concorde’s in bags,” added Gardner.

4. Adding secondary displays to increase visibility and impulse purchases. “In season, we showcase our pears on a separate display located near the front of the department in a high-visibility location. We utilize secondary displays for our family-pack bagged pears,” said Gardner.

5. Promoting recipes and pairing ideas when sampling pears. “We focus our in-store efforts on educating our employees and customers on the flavor profiles, nutrition profile, usage and pairing/recipes through demos and grower-interaction events. As a result, we are able to distinguish ourselves from competitors within our pear category,” said Gardner.

Dave Corsi, vice president of produce and floral at Wegmans, accepted the award at Fresh Summit on behalf of the company.

"Wegmans is honored to receive this recognition from USA Pears,” said Corsi. “We keep a balance by ensuring to employ merchandising excellence on all of our products, offering tasty ready-to-eat fruit along with educating customers. Over the years, the Pear Bureau Northwest provided great tools to educate our customers about the quality and eating characteristics of the many pear varieties. Without the organization’s assistance, we would not be equipped to provide the best-in-flavor fruit, an understanding of the optimum level of ripeness, and education on varietal differences to our customers."

The Pear Retailer of the Year Award was established by Pear Bureau Northwest in 2011. Past honorees were DeMoulas Market Basket (2011), Meijer (2012), Ingles Markets (2013), and Publix Super Markets (2014).

Source: PerishableNews.com