The Meaning Of Fresh

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

Sometimes the interesting data is on the flip side. Here, for example, we find that with all the hullaballoo about veganism — and ambassadors such as vegan-darling, President Clinton — only 3 percent of consumers claim they seek out vegan foods. Artisanal is oh so hot and trendy, but only 3 percent of consumers report they seek out artisanal foods.

The big winner shows up as “Fresh” — with 49 percent saying they seek fresh product when food shopping. The problem, though, is that the word has lots of meanings, and it is not at all clear what consumers are saying. In the produce trade, we like to believe it means consumers are seeking fresh product as opposed to canned or frozen, but that is kind of odd; after all, virtually every supermarket has a substantial fresh produce department. There is no problem in finding fresh produce.

Perhaps there are unspoken qualifiers, such as a desire for fresh produce priced competitively with canned or frozen? More likely, since the question is not what do you seek when you buy produce but what do you seek when you buy food, it expresses a generalized desire for a product that is not old or soon-to-be unfit for consumption. The consumer wants fresh bread, not stale bread, fresh milk, not sour, fresh meat, not discolored or with an odor, and the consumer wants produce that appears to be alive and crisp, and, well, fresh. Not produce that looks like it is on its last legs or is attracting fruit flies.

David Sprinkle, research director and publisher for Packaged Facts, seems to lean toward the idea that in seeking fresh foods when shopping, consumers are seeking “real” foods, not processed. So “fresh” means “unprocessed” or “natural,” but even here there is a lack of clarity as to what consumers think of as “unprocessed.” Are frozen strawberries deemed processed? And why is it that fresh-cut produce sales will continue to grow if consumers want “unprocessed” foods? Do they not see fresh-cut as processed?

Is the growth in fresh-cut not so much an outgrowth of consumer attitudes toward fresh convenience, but rather the growth a result of the font of innovation in the fresh-cut produce sector? While whole items change slowly as varieties evolve, fresh-cut can quickly innovate to meet consumer needs.

Yet there is some cause for concern here. Protein is more expensive than most produce. If the growth in produce comes from adding protein to items, this could cause retail produce-department sales to grow, while actual volume of fruits and vegetables sold declines.

When we read that consumers express they are “buying more fresh produce these days,” one wonders what the point of comparison is and how hazy are the memories. After all, there is little evidence that consumption is up. So how could this be true?

Perhaps it is just people responding in the way they think will win them approval, or perhaps they find themselves buying produce in more places. After all, they can get produce today from drug stores to dollar stores to CSAs. But the total volume hasn’t actually budged. Maybe it is a demographic fact that is always true — older people become more health conscious and buy more fresh produce. If so, then individuals will always truthfully report that they buy more produce than they used to, but as a whole, society’s consumption will not change absent population growth.

Perhaps it remains to be determined if salads with trendy ingredients — such as bok choy, chicory, frisée, kale, lolla rosa, máche, mizuna, tango, tatsoi, and wasabi arugula — are a trend or a signal of a bifurcation in the market in which a foodie sub-culture goes off in a direction increasingly unattached to the swings of the mainstream market.

The real struggle is understanding what it means when a consumer says that he/she is “seeking” a particular food characteristic. In the case of organics, as an example, 16 percent of consumers claim to be seeking this, but organics are not hard to find. And with less than 1 percent of U.S. farm and ranch land certified organic, it doesn’t mean that 16 percent of consumers are solely eating certified organic food.

Since it is pretty easy (albeit pricey) to eat organic, with lots of options to buy organic food, the consumers who express these thoughts must mean something different, perhaps just that they are receptive to the idea of buying organic, and if it is available at a competitive price, they will buy it.

Walt Whitman told us, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes,” so it seems with consumers: they seek fresh, but convenience is key; they want fruits and vegetables, but protein is a priority. The answer is that the industry must segment. What consumers — en masse — claim they want is never as important as what consumers want on specific shopping occasions. As the data collection improves, the opportunity for retailers and suppliers to focus improves as well. The opportunity is not to be broad, but to be specific; embrace research, but shrewdly.