Pear Challenge

Pear Challenge. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Kevin Moffitt with Pear Bureau Northwest recently spent some time talking about the challenges to marketing the northwest pear crop.

MOFFITT: Well the first issue is the fact that pears are just not on people’s list. Not everybody is buying pears. They’re an impulse item with just a small but solid core group that is buying most of the fruit sold.

In a list of top fruit items sold in the U.S. apples come in at the number one spot but pears don’t make the top 10 at number 11.

MOFFITT: And in addition to that, while nearly 90% of consumers buy bananas, apples are close behind at about 83%, grapes come in at 75% and strawberries 71%. Less than 50% of consumers buy pears in any given year. In addition to that 35% of pear purchasers are buying 90% of the pears sold.

He says of those that do buy pears they tend to buy only 7 times per year.

MOFFITT: And they’re purchasing about 1.8 pounds or roughly say 4 pears per trip. That compares with a medium purchaser who’s buying on just about 2 purchase trips per year and they’re buying about 3 pears each trip. And the light purchasers are only buying about once a year and they’re buying about 2 pears. So while we’ll continue to nurture those heavy pear purchasers one key objective is to move those medium pear purchasers up slightly.

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