The forecast has become a reality; we've achieved full speed throughout the industry these past several days. As growers across our different regions started working deeper into their Bing crops, we thankfully saw a marked increase in Northwest daily total shipments. Mother Nature worked especially hard against the Bings in 2016 and 2017 for some reason, but seems to be trying to make up for it this year. Dark, crunchy and sweet, the arrival of the Bings in the marketplace led to a statistical rise in consumer emails into our office praising the cherry crop. Our growers and shippers are working around the clock in an attempt to meet the worldwide demand.
This strong start in June has relatively followed the pre-season projections. Assuming that trend continues, now is the time to lock into cherries for the late July/early August window and capitalize on the last chance at summer sales.
As we've seen all year, the separation between our early and late districts is quite wide. By now it's clear that we’ll see a solid late season opportunity this year. The current estimate projects nearly 2 million boxes to be shipped into August, which allows for several opportunities for retailers to promote. Talk to your shippers now to ensure that you'll have a chance to boost your late summer dollar sales. In a study for the NWCG, Nielsen Perishables Group found that a Top Retailer (in terms of cherry best practices) with 100 stores made an average of $1.2 million in additional cherry sales over the last 4 weeks of their season.
"Last Chance" and countdown-style promotions have shown in study after study to be the single most effective late season cherry promotion. The recipe for a strong final category push includes circular ads and P.O.P. messages which encourage consumers to buy while they can and freeze for off-season use.
The Northwest light sweet crop has been shaping up nicely this season. As with the earliest dark sweet varieties, the Early Robin and early plantings of Rainiers showed a little more winter reduction on the crop. However, the transition to Rainier is nearly complete in all regions. Overall sizing of the light sweets is up compared to last season. These color-picked favorites will make great displays for National Rainier Cherry Day on July 11th – the next ad week following the 4th of July.
According to the USDA's look at the national circular ads, "with Father's Day over, some retailers jumped ahead to Independence Day promotions, while some opted not to issue an ad this week. Still others used the lull in between holidays to promote the plentiful varieties of seasonal fruit available – in fact, 4 of the 5 most-advertised items this week were fruits. Rainier cherries and pluots joined peaches, nectarines, and red cherries as summer fruit royalty." Across the U.S., retailers have been using Northwest cherries to aggressively market to consumers, and with the high quality and sugars, those sales are keeping pace with supply.
Of those most-advertised items, Cherries took second place in a tie with strawberries and grapes at 9% of all fruit ads, while the collective grape category took first overall with 11 percent.
There are a number of reasons for fresh cherries to be on the top of the shopping list, but the fact of the matter is that 2 separate studies have pegged Northwest cherry sales as 72% impulse-driven. These "Light" cherry shoppers may only buy a bag or two each season, but their impact results in a 65% increase in cherry dollar sales. So make sure they can see those cherry displays!
For those in a hurry, the Northwest Cherry Growers sponsors a national program of in-store radio advertisements. These are currently running in over 10,000 stores across the United States, including their fuel affiliates. In an industry first, we are also running a health-focused message within CVS stores. As one of the nation's leading destinations for health information and remedies, we felt it was an ideal opportunity to share the variety of grower-funded, federally-approved health research results with potential cherry customers. If you're interested, you can hear the ad here
Source: Northwest Cherry Growers
