It always makes sense to amp up your avocado displays and cross-merchandise with all the guacamole essentials during the NFL playoffs – especially the week leading up to the Super Bowl, of course. What will be different in 2021 is that many stores will need to account for the likelihood that a larger chunk of their customers will be doing gameday grocery shopping online instead of in stores.
With the Super Bowl, the biggest avocado holiday of the year, rapidly approaching, now is a great time to confirm that everyone picking produce for online orders – whether your team or members of a third-party fulfillment service – knows how to select an avocado based on when the shopper wants to use it.
If someone is picking up an order with avocados on Friday and Saturday the week of the game, you had better be giving them an avocado they can make guacamole with on Sunday.
Many retailers give shoppers the option to leave notes on individual items when they fill out their online order. If a customer says they want ripe avocados, what they need is fruit with a slight give, said Denise Junqueiro, senior director of marketing and communications for Oxnard, Calif.-based Mission Produce.
Her remarks provide some insight for personal shoppers and others filling those orders.
“It’s all about the feel,” Junqueiro said. “The feel is the art. Everybody tries to look at color – color’s not an indication. You really have to feel … If there’s a slight give, that’s going to be perfect for the customer. If you’re pushing on it and it’s going in – and you should never push on it, you should just gently touch – we call that a water balloon, and that’s not going to be a good consumer experience.
“The gentle give is the key … It’s the key to getting the perfect avocado.”
A note for click-and-collect orders in particular: Once those perfect avocados have been selected, they need to be handled correctly in those last few steps between the sales floor and the area where orders wait to be picked up by shoppers.
Certain items may be refrigerated during that in-between time, and avocados should not be among them if the temperature of the container is below 40 degrees. Lower temps will stress the fruit, and your shoppers won’t get the avocado experience they were hoping for.
Last but not least, with many consumers doing some grocery shopping online, make sure to work with your company’s marketing team to aggressively merchandise your avocados (and their produce friends) online as well as in-store, from the website to all the different social media accounts.
Happy selling!