In the fresh produce game, when someone is good at merchandising — and I mean really good — we say that person has “good hands.” It’s as good of a compliment a produce person can hope for.
With enough time and experience, anyone can learn to be a “good hands” clerk. But I digress.
I recall walking into a store one day to review conditions; a frustrated newer produce clerk was building a display, and I could just tell the way it was leaning — off-kilter, like the ancient Egyptian Bent Pyramid built under the Old Kingdom’s Pharaoh Sneferu — that the apple display was doomed to topple.
“I don’t understand,” he said glumly while gently pushing against the wavering wall of apples. “The older guys build these things every day without worry. What gives?”
“That display is about to give way, I can promise you that much,” I said. “We can fix it though. C’mon. Scoot your cart over. Grab some empty boxes.”
We proceeded to dismantle the clerk’s wobbly apple-stacking job. He was disappointed that it wasn’t a quick fix, but I explained a few things as we carefully worked our way to the bottom rows. “See how the bottom rows are misaligned? Keep in mind that as your foundation goes, so goes your whole display.”
“But these apples don’t fit in the fixture base like other apples or citrus, where the fruit size happens to line up just right,” he said. “Too much empty space behind the base row; the apples don’t stay put, and in fact, shift around. So yeah, the subsequent rows don’t line up right.”
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“Exactly,” I said. We took a few minutes to find and cut some merchandising foam to use as a dummy in the void space he mentioned. I told him that any such material might suffice: cardboard, foam trays, anything. Demonstrating how to snugly place the dummy material, we built the ascending rows, which then fell neatly into place.
“There. Now you can continue with your display. See if that doesn’t work out all right,” I said. He smiled. After his “aha!” moment, he went right to work with confidence and even picked up his speed.
So often in produce, a challenge or an issue — be it with fruit falling from a display, an employee struggling to get the wet rack set up on time, how best to receive a produce load, and more — can be identified by tearing things down to the mat, metaphorically speaking, and starting over.
I remember how, as a new produce manager, I agonized over writing my first labor schedule. It just wasn’t coming out the way I envisioned. It happens to the best of us. A more experienced produce manager friend stopped by to help.
We sat down together with a blank schedule and a sharp pencil (tearing it down), and we began with the basics: listing full-timers and part-timers, giving everyone their days off (or at least their preferred days off). Then, going day by day, we added to the basics: opening shift and closing shift.
Then we filled in the missing pieces of middle shifts, extra shifts for busier days, and so on. Using a pencil helped, as I used the eraser a lot. Not everyone got what they preferred, and like every schedule, we had to adjust the total hours to satisfy the store manager.
When we were done, the schedule stood, and I copied it — in ink. Training takes time, tearing things down to the mat, so to speak. But with some persistence and will, produce lessons don’t take too many repetitions to master.
Quote to know: “There's never enough time to do something right the first time, but there's always enough time to do it over.”
Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His 40 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions.