I've been poring over my new Fresh Trends 2017 in preparation for the Fresh Trends Quiz Show at the West Coast Produce Expo, May 20.
For a fun comparison, I found an article from The Packer's Ideas in Merchandising from the late 1960s called “Consumers view today's produce department.” The writer, Carol Rosen, selected 20 shoppers “at random” and “while the study is not meant to be definitive, we do feel that it is typical” of the American shopper.
My first eyebrow raise came from the sample: they were all women; 15 of them were “housewives”; and, only two were “unmarried girls.”
Think about our average shopper today. We're pretty close to a 50-50 split on females versus males, and if we're talking about online shopping, there's at least one recent study that says men are leading the charge in that channel.
Close to half of our Fresh Trends sample of 1,000 consumers were married, 29% were single, and 18% were separated/divorced/widowed. Sixty-one percent of our shoppers didn't have any dependent children.
Other notable differences?
The 1960s consumers had a keen dislike of packaged produce, saying they considered packaged produce to be “the produce manager's waste.”
They also said they weren't swayed by a beautiful display.
“I look at the fruit, not at the display,” said Mrs. Leo Figg, a Texas native who works in Kansas City. Mrs. Figg said displays “did nothing for her.”
And that was the attitude of the majority, the article said.
The ladies were even harsher about sampling and in-store demos:
“Demonstrations pressure you into buying things you don't want or need,” says Mrs. Lloyd Delinger of Dayton, Ohio.
Ha! I challenge you to get between a modern shopper and the sample table at Costco. In fact, sampling was the No. 1 driver to introduce new items to Fresh Trends shoppers.
I did find some of the same gripes we hear from consumers today. One 1960s shopper was “discouraged by both price and quality.” Another agreed, “Prices should be less; if they were I'd buy more. Things are just too expensive,” and this one was especially poignant:
“Lettuce is out of sight.”
Well, that's familiar, especially considering what's going on in California and Arizona right now. But can anyone guess the retail price of lettuce back then? About 15 cents, according to an old ad I found.
The ladies also loved their “convenience foods,” but it wasn't the same thing you're thinking about today. No, they're not talking about fresh-cut or value-added. In 1968, “convenience food” meant canned fruits and vegetables.
“Mrs. Erwin says the problem with fresh is its perishability. ‘I would rather have canned because you don't have to eat it all at once. However, frozen has a better quality and flavor,” the article said.
But the majority said they preferred fresh. “My husband is picky, so I have to buy either fresh or frozen,” and they even touched on the age-old debate of fresh vs. processed, with the same results you see debated on Facebook.
“Besides,” said Mrs. Larry Pierce, from Sonoma, Calif. “I have read surveys which say you get just as much nutrition from canned and frozen as you do when you cook fresh.”
Fifty years later, we're still arguing over the same stuff, though I envision the arguments happening on social media instead of in someone's formal living room over coffee and cake.
Fresh vs. frozen, packaged vs. bulk, and being too busy to do our own food prep.
I wonder what the next 50 years will bring? Will we all be eating Soylent ordered on Amazon?
If you'd like to see the whole story, I shared it on my blog HERE.