Promoting the Billion-Pound Pistachio Crop

There's a lot of work being done to promote that big billion-pound crop of pistachios that just got harvested.

Richard Matoian is the executive director of the Fresno-based American Pistachio Growers.

“The 2020 pistachio harvest is ended. We are still waiting to get the final number in of what was produced, but we know it's going to be right at, or just above a billion pounds, which will be our largest crop in history,” noted Matoian. “And our focus is making sure that we effectively market that crop to make sure that growers have good economic returns coming back to them.”

The big thing that APG is doing is focusing on advertising. “Yeah, so we've gotten focused on doing a lot more print and actually television advertising, which is new for us this year, both domestically and in our key export market,” Matoian explained

“But on top of that, we've engaged with five key chefs, some of which are household names like Wolfgang Puck, and Martin Yan from Yan Can Cook, to cook with pistachios and we're inviting the food media and various restaurant and food writers to look in and listen in to see how these famous chefs are cooking with pistachios,” said Matoian

Famous chefs are cooking on special webinars that those food writers and restaurants are invited to, and they're cooking up special dishes with pistachios.