MONDAY Report : A Fresh Approach : Supermarkets Showcase Fruits and Vegetables to Cash In on Consumers’ Interest in Nutrition

Taking a cue from trendy restaurateurs who place their chefs and ovens in full view of diners, supermarkets are moving the choppers, slicers and packagers who prepare fresh fruits and vegetables for display out of the back room and into the produce department.

From their new preparation area in the produce department at Vons Pavilion in Baldwin Park, for example, Vince Shellock and Manny Leon still trim the celery and snip the tops off carrots. But they also are right there to answer customers’ questions about how to prepare the proliferating kinds of fresh food carried by today’s supermarkets.

“The explosion in the variety of produce is phenomenal,” said Karen Brown of the Food Marketing Institute in Washington. Today’s average produce department carries 250 fresh items, and the bigger stores may offer 400 or more. “And you can see demographic changes--more ethnic items and different varieties of fruits and vegetables.”

This so-called greening of the grocery industry follows successive stages of development in the sale of produce, running from the Tin Age through the Ice Age that immediately proceeded the current fascination with freshness. Last year, retail sales of fresh produce increased 8.4% for the second straight year, and they are expected to approach $40 billion this year--twice the growth rate of total grocery sales.

Theaters for Shoppers

Growers and packers, too, are responding to the freshness phenomenon by, among other things, expanding the “pre-cooling” of crops immediately after picking, a technique that significantly extends the “shelf life” of lettuce, broccoli, strawberries and other produce. To help retailers carry out the farm-fresh theme, Sun World International, the Indio, Calif.-based marketer, has introduced colorful, professionally designed packing crates that can be used for displaying the fruits they contain.

With all the color, activity and interest generated by produce departments these days, it’s no wonder that store designer Herb Ross of New York, who thinks of today’s supermarkets as theaters with shoppers as actors, considers the produce department to constitute the critical first act. Consumers highly value the quality and variety of fresh produce in picking the store where they do their main grocery shopping.

According to the 1988 “Fresh Trends” survey conducted by the Packer, a trade journal, cleanliness and appearance are foremost on shoppers’ minds. Second was consistent quality, followed by good value, large selection, clearly labeled prices, low prices, attractive specials, convenient physical layout, availability of both bulk goods and packaged fresh produce and knowledgeable employees.

This recently acquired star status explains why the produce department is the scene of so much change. The ever-broadening array of fresh fruits and vegetables are displayed in increasingly innovative ways: in portable stands that allow flexible layouts and varied displays; in false-bottom containers that give a bountiful look while exposing a minimum of perishables; under lighting systems that evoke early dawn harvest hours to emphasize freshness; in rough-hewn wooden bins that recall the farm itself.

Many More Salad Bars

Retailers are installing “mist machines” that automatically spray shelves of leafy greens, keeping them moist and glistening. At “melon bars,” shoppers can select freshly sliced melons of all types. Elsewhere, vegetables are offered sliced and packaged, ready to be popped into microwave ovens, or chopped and displayed in salad bars and deli departments along with cooked dishes ready for heating up at home.

The number of in-store salad bars has doubled in two years, Progressive Grocer reports.

“There is tremendous interest by customers in time and convenience,” said Brown of the Food Marketing Institute. “The ‘60-Minute Gourmet’ is about 60 minutes too long. Let’s talk about the 60-second gourmet!”

While surveys show a continuing increase in the number of meals taken outside the home, “People don’t want to eat out every night,” Brown said. “But they don’t want to cook every night, either. What they want is something that is nutritious, high in quality, tastes good and can be prepared at home in a very short period of time.”

Consumers continue to pay more attention these days to exotic species of fruits and vegetables. Retailers encourage experimentation by offering samples and demonstrations, providing recipes and running videos and other displays calling attention to the new items.

According to Frieda Caplan of Frieda’s Finest, a pioneering distributor of specialty produce in Los Angeles, sales of exotics continue to increase across the country. On her best-seller list: Australian blue squash, Asian pears, cactus leaves, cherimoyas (a custard-like fruit), elephant garlic (giant but mild clusters of cloves), enoki mushrooms and baby vegetables.

But for all that the odd and the unseen have managed to edge into the spotlight, surveys still show that, in terms of regularity of purchase, the more mundane come first for shoppers.

Only One to Benefit

The Food Marketing Institute and the Produce Marketing Assn. report, for example, that 55% of shoppers they queried bought bananas “at least weekly” all year, followed by apples (42%) and oranges (28%). Strawberries topped seasonal fruit purchases, with 37% of shoppers buying them weekly, edging seedless green grapes (36%), cantaloupes (35%), Red Delicious apples (32%) and seedless red grapes and peaches (31%).

So far, only the produce department has benefited from increased appreciation of the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables in diets. While the dairy case has had to contend with concern for animal-fat content, meat departments with cholesterol levels and deli sections with preservatives in cold-cuts, produce, in contrast, has managed to ride on the coat-tails of one study after another extolling the benefits of fresh, light and nutritious eating.

But concern for food safety now threatens to end this privileged sanctuary.

The possible presence of chemical residues left on fresh produce appears to be alarming a growing number of consumers--though not enough to slow sales. Some retailers have responded by hiring private labs, such as Oakland-based Nutri-Clean, to conduct spot checks of what they are selling to supplement normal government inspections. The availability of such grocer-tested produce remains sparse, however, and so far the added testing has tended to validate the Agriculture Department’s contention that the nation’s food supply is generally safe.

“There’s a lot of confusion,” said Lisa Barmann, spokeswoman for the United Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Assn., a growers-wholesalers trade group in Alexandria, Va. “Some people are not aware at all that pesticides are used, or of why they are used, or of (the importance of) tolerance levels.

“As they say, ‘Dose makes the poison.’ ” Barmann said, “and consumers are not receiving complete information.”

Whatever their concern, shoppers have not yet turned away from buying fresh. The Packer’s national sample of 1,309 households found that nearly two-thirds--64%--chose the following statement as most descriptive of how they feel: “I am concerned about the possible presence of chemical residues on fresh produce but have not altered my purchasing.” Of the rest, 18% had changed, but 19% replied: “I am not very concerned.”

That could change, of course, and the stakes are huge and growing: Last summer alone, nearly 7 billion pounds of fresh summer fruit went to market--about 30 pounds for every man, woman and child in the United States.