Greensboro, N.C.-based The Fresh Market recently released its annual specialty food trends report, and vice president of produce merchandising Chris Romano joined The Packer’s retail editor Ashley Nickle on Tip of the Iceberg Podcast to discuss how produce fits into the trends and how The Fresh Market is merchandising in these most unusual times.
As far as trends, produce items don’t get much more popular than mushrooms are currently, and The Fresh Market had a huge push this holiday season with varieties including oyster, white beech, king trumpets, shiitake, maitake, chanterelles and more. Romano described mushrooms as the new protein, fit for the center of the plate.
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“It’s the right texture, it absorbs flavors marvelously, you could just do salt and pepper if you wanted to, so it’s a really, really good medium in order to add flavor to your table without adding meat,” Romano said. “It’s a great item. It’s also pretty cool-looking, it’s exciting material to work with.”
The Fresh Market gives mushrooms plenty of space in its stores, and it uses packaged product rather than bulk, even though Romano does love a loose mushroom display, he said.
“It looks gorgeous, but you really have to know what you’re doing as far as taking care of them then, so actually packaged, though it’s not as beautiful ... it definitely takes care of the mushroom better, and that’s really what you want,” Romano said. “You really want them to be healthy and fresh when the consumer takes them home.”
A great selling tool for mushrooms or other produce are the delicious-sounding preparation techniques and recipe applications Romano describes. Stores can communicate that kind of information in point-of-sale material, in the company magazine, on social media and through other means, but Romano said the most important way The Fresh Market gets those messages to shoppers is through its store-level associates.
When those folks are excited about all the ways to use different mushrooms, for instance, they share with shoppers.
Those conversations, and training overall, look different now than they did a year ago. The Fresh Market has digitized much of its training, using three- or four-minute videos to share best practices and give quick show-and-tell product introductions.
Using videos that people can watch on their phones is definitely a trend in training, Romano said.
Before the pandemic, sampling was one of the cherished opportunities to share product information and applications with shoppers. These days, The Fresh Market is still cooking in stores, and the aromas certainly add to the shopping experience, but traditional sampling is on hold, as is the case for most other grocery retailers.
That being the case, if a shopper is really engaged in considering an unfamiliar item, say a specialty citrus fruit or a proprietary apple variety, it might makes sense to just offer one for free, Romano said. A shopper who likes it will return and buy it next time, and a shopper who doesn’t will still have a memorable experience to tell friends.
Romano noted that the experience of a market should be an engaging one, not just a chore but a chance to see people and products, to browse and chat. At The Fresh Market, that interactive element has started to return.
“Conversation is back, which is great, and that place that you come to to explore is back again, in my opinion,” Romano said.