Avocado Ripening
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
The marketing and distribution of avocados have changed dramatically over the years, with ripening improvements making a big difference. Chris Sayer of Petty Ranch says, not only has that led to a more positive experience for consumers, but it’s also created a stronger demand for growers.
Sayer… “You know, the old way of distributing avocados was you'd take a huge shipment to the grocery store while they were all green, rock hard. Customers would come and look at them and say, well, I'd like to have an avocado, but these are too hard, and, you know, this won't be ripe for a week, and I don't know what I'm gonna eat in a week. Because, you know, Americans classically only plan two or three days ahead in terms of their meal, and so they'd, they'd pass on it. Then you'd have a window of a couple of days where they were ripe, and then, you know, half the shipment would end up getting wrinkled and rotten, you know, on the grocery store shelves. With the industry really taking the lead and making that much more accessible with the ripening, now people could say, Hey, you know, avocado sounds great, and what do you know? Here's ripe avocados. I can have these tonight, or I can have these tomorrow night. And that just made them that much more accessible. And, of course, the number of bad consumer experiences went down a lot too, because when you leave it to people to ripen the avocados themselves, a lot of times they get past them and then they're over-ripe and gone. And then they're, you know, unhappy to have spent some money on a relatively expensive piece of produce.”
Sayer says this is a contributing factor as to why avocado consumption has grown over several decades.
