Who was your influence when you joined the produce industry?
Did you have a mentor who shared all they knew about how to trim lettuce, how to stack avocados just right or the perfect way to face a display to avoid having it topple over?
Can you think of someone who’s championing that effort in your organization? Are there enough of him or her to go around?
Resources for training new personnel, or the lack thereof, is a major challenge for the produce industry. And even when the resources exist from commodity organizations or vendors, the logistics of reaching in-store personnel on a relevant scale are make efforts cost- or time-prohibitive.
That’s why I’m thrilled to see the Pear Bureau Northwest’s Pear University thrive. We need more resources like this, and Produce Retailer Magazine has several in the pipeline as we prepare to launch new products this fall. In the meantime, our 10-Minute Merchandiser Armand Lobato has a helpful chart for training new clerks in this month’s column on page 38.
That chart, and archived 10-Minute Merchandiser topics are available for download at ProduceRetailer.com.