12/21/07 Conditioning Pears Part 2

Conditioning Pears. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Pears. You love them or you don't, and a lot of people who don't have really just had a bad experience with them. Pears that aren't quite ripe can be hard and without much flavor and of course pears tend to become overly ripe very quickly. Kevin Moffitt, President of Pear Bureau Northwest says that the industry is looking at ways to help bring maximum enjoyment from pears and one is by working with retailers. MOFFITT: One of the hurdles with retailers is convincing them that ripe fruit does not mean more shrink. Ripe fruit meaning more shrink is a misconception. You actually get more repeat sales with ripe fruit, not less. One thing is the cooler in the back room should not be their warehouse. We've got to tell them that you don't just bring in rock hard pears. They used to like to work pears like potatoes. They wanted it hard as rocks and put it out there but that's not going to sell more fruit. Moffitt says that the word "ripe" is not a bad four-letter word. MOFFITT: We conducted a ripe pear test in 2002 where we had some stores with ripe fruit, some control store without ripe fruit, we studied the difference over a period of time and the conditioned D'Anjou's out sold the non-conditioned fruit by 16%. According to Moffitt the real trick has been in keeping the retailers on top of the conditioning programs and that is really what the industry has been pushing. MOFFITT: Last year we developed a plan of action for the industry. We noticed that we kind of plateaued a little bit so we tried to revitalize it and build something with some target retailers and get the shippers and retailers back on track. So where are we today; almost 30 retailers are carrying conditioned pears. There are six retailers that are ripening in their warehouses. Many retailers are using signage and stickers to promote the ripe fruit so the next time you head to the grocery store, grab a pear, check the neck and enjoy. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.