Changing up the look of your department with the seasons is key to communicating to your shoppers which items are great, and flexible fixtures can help with that goal.
“I am a fan of having not just flexible cases but varied sizes so you can intermatch and put things together in different ways so it’s not so linear,” Joe Watson, former director of produce for Rouses Markets and now vice president of membership and engagement for PMA, said during the winter results webinar for PMG’s Produce Artist Award Series. “You can really create some character to those types of displays.”
Curious who the big winners were for our winter season? Read about the top entries here.
Armand Lobato, an industry veteran who’s held positions ranging from produce manager to supervisor to buyer and who’s now on the foodservice side of the business, noted during the webinar that flexibility helps retailers allocate space differently depending on which items they need to emphasize.
“Produce is a bulk business,” Lobato said. “We need lots of room. We need room on the sales floor, we need room in the backrooms. It’s something that goes in and comes out and you need that flexibility, especially on the sales floor.”
Lobato and Watson both noted the importance of lighting in the department as well.
“The more flexible your department is, track lighting, spot lighting is imperative,” Watson said. “Ceiling-mounted fluorescents and even high-density lights is not going to give you the same impact as something that you can actually put on the product and adjust it as you move tables around – put those shadows where you need them such as on your potatoes and the like. It will really add a lot of character and ambience to your department.”
Watch the full recording of the winter wrap-up webinar here.