TEXAS - The arrival of the spring months is a good sign—it means Texas 1015 Sweet Onions are on the way. With the season getting an early start this year, the South Texas Onion Committee is helping retailers prepare for a category boost with exclusive crop insights.

“Thanks to a warm, dry, and windy winter, the Texas sweet onion season kicked off early this year!” shared Dante Galeazzi, Marketing Order Manager. “We saw cartons of Texas 1015s arriving in stores the last week of February, well ahead of our typical mid-March start. Because Mother Nature was so cooperative, the quality looks great. Volume is light at this point, but in a few weeks the industry will hit a stride, and we’ll be rocking and rolling well into June.”

While Dante says it’s a bit early to gauge pricing for the season, costs are looking above average as other regions have experienced supply gaps, leaving the marketplace eager to get a new supply of high-quality fresh onions to consumers.

“There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to retailers displaying, merchandising, or promoting Texas sweet onions. Each retailer is unique and has different strategies that work best for them and their customers,” Dante pointed out. “We offer resources that retailers can utilize to promote Texas 1015 Sweet Onions, such as merchandising flyers, social media toolkits, and infographics, as well as point-of-sale displays and shelf talkers. We also encourage retailers to kick off the season with early promotions to remind consumers about fresh sweet onions and influence their buying behavior as they switch from storage onions to fresh sweets. This way, consumers get into the sweets category sooner and stay in longer, creating more revenue for retailers.”

Dante also tells me that now is a great time to focus on cross-merchandising opportunities for summer meal ingredients and cooking occasions; for example, place sweet onions alongside hamburger ingredients or items for fresh salads like cucumbers and tomatoes.

The opportunities for this category are abundant, especially as there are almost 100 Texas onion growers across 35 counties, growing more than 7,000 acres this year.

“The Texas 1015 Sweet onion is the first domestic onion of the year. That out-of-the-gate opportunity with the first domestic sweet onion is a real promotable opportunity for retailers to kick off the category for the spring season,” Dante said. “Additionally, the fact that there are two growing regions for Texas 1015 sweet onions—the Rio Grande Valley in deep south Texas and the Uvalde Winter Garden region in south central Texas—creates a longer window of availability and helps insulate against weather-related slowdowns that might impact production or harvest.”

Texas 1015 sweet onions are available from March through the end of June/early July.

More market insights are on their way to ANUK, so stick around.

South Texas Onion Committee