WENATCHEE, WA - What can we do to balance the scales between supply and demand? This question I recently posed to CMI Orchards’ Joel Hewitt and Loren Foss bore particularly sweet fruit—pardon the pun—amid a plentiful apple season.

“We urge retailers to capitalize on the superior Washington apple crop this season and to keep pushing apples well into the summer months. Supply is great, demand is high, quality is superb—all stars are in alignment for a spectacular year ahead,” Joel Hewitt, Vice President of Sales, shared.

With one of its largest crops in history underway, Joel said retailers have tremendous opportunities to promote apples into the summer, teeing up the opportunity for historic incremental sales throughout the rest of the year. For apple enthusiasts, it is a prime time marked by a combination of high-quality fruit, abundant supply, and a wide variety of choices; a winning trifecta for moving the needle on apple sales.

“We’re optimistic that the quality and flavor of the fruit this year will continue to resonate with consumers throughout the season,” Joel continued.

While this could spell out a scenario in which supply is outpacing demand, the CMI team had a few trade insights to share on gaining back even ground through some of its innovative tools

“Contending with a market in flux like this can bring challenges—however, every challenge presents an opportunity to think outside the box and review how we approach our business,” Joel reflected. “Sometimes the best ideas spawn from the most challenging situations, and this is truly how we catapult innovations at CMI.”

Not the least of which is the company’s Flavogram® program—a scale offering a new system of categorizing and comparing apple flavors developed to trade shoppers up to higher priced apples—and the Relax™ campaign.

“Spawned from a growing consumer base wanting to understand more about the carbon footprint and environmental impact of packaging they purchase, the Relax campaign removes the smoke-and-mirrors, or ‘greenwashing,’ that shoppers are getting increasingly disenchanted with and resonates with them on an emotional level with our clear, concise messaging,” Joel shared.

He explained, too, that CMI is seeing a lot of Honeycrisp promotions, some using the variety as a loss leader.

“We continue to encourage retailers to consider overall apple category deflation when promoting Honeycrisp, as doing so can drive the category down–if a shopper can pick up a winner like Honeycrisp for under $1.00/lb why would they ever choose anything else?” Joel asked. "We find that the best-in-class merchandising strategy is to price Honeycrisp at promotable pricing that doesn’t under-inflate the category, and team that up with other proprietary varieties to offer variety and enhance margins." 

For example, Joel explained, running ads with Honeycrisp at 1.49 lb along with another proprietary variety can lead to less category deflation and cannibalization of the category; consumers, he pointed out, will pick up just as many Honeycrisp at a promotable price, boosting sales and providing a seamless way to introduce new varieties to consumers.

Ambrosia Gold®, Cosmic Crisp®, Envy™, EverCrisp®, Jazz™, JUICI®, Kanzi®, KIKU®, Smitten®, Sunrise Magic®, and SugarBee® are CMI’s branded stars, and Loren Foss, Vice President of Business Strategy, said how they are shining particularly bright this season, offering excellent choices to enhance the varietal selection in any department.

“Our expectation was that this was going to be a superior crop, and it falls right in line with that; conditions, quality, color, and volume are really excellent. The high-flavor branded varieties are key for retailers to capture incremental sales by trading customers up, and with the largest varietal selection, CMI can make sure retailers have something for everyone,” Loren concluded.

As the cooler months continue, AndNowUKnow will keep you on the up and up of the latest in fresh category news.