Getting Ready for Pear Season

Getting Ready for Pear Season. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

This has always been a favorite time of year for me. Not because I like hot weather but because there is so much fresh fruit available. Kevin Moffitt with Pear Bureau Northwest says they are getting ready for a record crop this year – an estimated 19.8 million boxes.

MOFFITT: It surpassed a record from 1997. We’re going to have our hands full of pears and we’re going to need to get out very hard and strong with our promotions worldwide.

It is interesting that there is a lot more thought put into selling pears than just sticking them out in a bin at the market.

MOFFITT: Our guys do retail store checks weekly and we compile all that into a big database so we can sit down with a retailer and say this is what you did last year in terms of linear feet of pears and how many varieties and this is what your competitors are doing and this is how you can improve based on what we’re going to have this year with the crop.

We reported earlier that the Pear Bureau was doing a promotional tie-in with an up-and-coming young band called Honor Society.

MOFFITT: And we’re tying in some retail promotions with that where people will enter a contest, they have to buy pears to enter and then they can win a Hollywood experience with the band which means maybe sitting in on a recording session or a CD release party, they’re going to be coming out with a CD this September so that’s pretty exciting. That should get us off hard and heavy, fast and furious.

And on top of all that, the pears taste just great.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.