Category Advisor: Packaged Salads: Chiquita (Fresh Express)

Fresh Express brought value and insight to its retail partners through a new automated analytic tool (VAT), a new direct retail team to reduce product shrink and close distribution voids, and new salad kits.

One retailer wanted to determine why the brand’s Bowl Salad Kits were generating more sales than the standard Bagged Salad Kits. By using VAT, Fresh Express showed the retailer that the reason for the success of the bowls wasn’t that bagged kits were less relevant to consumers, but rather that the situation was simply a function of the retailer’s switching promotions from bagged kits to bowls. Being able to objectively quantify those drivers was critical to making that point.

The retailer saw excellent results in the packaged salad category, based on two key initiatives: the new salad kits and a new retail execution plan. Consisting of top consumer-tested favorites and improved classics in a compelling package redesign, the new salad kit SKUs experienced an overall consumer appeal rate of 78 percent. Fresh Express generated additional excitement through limited-time-only (LTO) SKUs. In fact, the first two LTO kits were so successful that the retailer requested “permanent” availability.

Additionally, a new retail team began full operations, from store calls to concise reporting at the corporate level, focusing on internal data and store audits.

The results speak for themselves: approximately 40 percent improvement in year-over-year shrink, and distribution voids cut almost in half.