Pear Challenge Part 2

Pear Challenge Part 2

Pear Challenge Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

Pear Bureau Northwest's Kevin Moffitt would like to see more people choosing pears when they visit their grocery store. Pear purchases tend to be small and infrequent.

MOFFITT: Basically, just getting the medium purchasers to buy on two or three more occasions you are going to get a big difference in the category. Not only are pear purchasers good for us they're profitable for the retailer as well. Each pear purchaser spends about $500 more dollars per year in the supermarket.

He says they show the supermarkets how they can increase sales through pears. And Moffitt says pears are a high impulse item.

MOFFITT: We're also competing with 39-thousand products carried in an average U.S. supermarket and more than 600 of those are in the produce department alone. So every 600 items in that produce department is vying for that consumers attention and for that consumer dollar. And consumers are going to the store about 2.2 times per week. So we need to capture their attention and grab them while everybody else is trying to do the same thing.

Pears contribute just 1% to a supermarket's produce department's sales.

MOFFITT: This compares to apples at nearly 7% and the top category which is berries which contributes about 8% of supermarket sales. Another challenge is the fact that many varieties don't change color. Consumers are a little confused when they get a Bartlett, it changes color like a banana, they know it's ripe. With an Anjou pear or even a Bosc they don't always know when to eat it at its best.

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

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