The melon category in the summer — what an opportunity! Mike Mauti, managing partner of Execulytics, joins PMG editor Ashley Nickle to discuss assortment, merchandising, operations and more.
What have been your melon category observations this summer? Below are a couple from Ashley's recent store visits. Give us a shout at [email protected] to share your melon experiences. We love talking produce!
Now on to those observations from shopping trips this summer ...
Variety generates impulse and incremental purchases. If you don’t have it, they can’t buy it.
When I went to the grocery store a few weeks ago and the store had three or four melon varieties displayed together, I bought three – cantaloupe, canary and Lemon Drop – and, when I got home, I made a melon medley that lasted our household the whole week. Delicious!
On my next trip, to a different location of the same retailer, there were just two melon options. I bought both – but I would have happily bought more again if there were more varieties available.
The week after that, apparently the produce team saw me coming, because the display had probably seven or eight different melon options. I've only got so much budget for melons specifically, but I did get four!
Make sure you get credit for that variety. Getting all those awesome options out the door at the correct ring can be a challenge.
My husband recently tried to key in a Lemon Drop melon at the self-checkout register, but it wasn’t listed as an option and had no sticker on it. The clerk told him to enter it as a canary melon or as a “regular melon,” presumably a standard cantaloupe. At this store, there was a $1.50 difference between the Lemon Drop and the cantaloupe. Ouch.
On a later visit, the canary melon ring up perfectly with the PLU sticker. Score! Unfortunately, the three specialty melons with nets and tags (which I thrilled to see as they provided not just variety names but flavor attributes and some grower information) did not interact with the register. One prompted an "item not found" notification, and the other requested me to set the item on the scale and then listed $15 as the price.
So make sure all your varieties are available for look-up by cashiers or customers, and think about fun ways to educate clerks on the higher-dollar specialty items in the department, one season at a time.