So, Your Customers Think They’re Foodies

Empowering advice to help retail produce teams demystify terminology and boost sales.

Increasingly, über-informed “Top Chef” and Food Network-watching, Saveur-reading, inquisitive customers have the potential to impact your bottom line. How they affect your sales may depend on your team’s ability to respond to their queries, no matter how inane or far-reaching.

I’d like to help demystify some current foodie terminology that may further empower your retail produce sales teams:

Local: This term refers to the area from which the product was harvested. There’s no strict definition for the mileage of local food, but generally, anything grown within a 50- to 100-mile radius is considered hyper-local for commercial distribution. Other food systems refer to sourcing from a 250- to 500-mile radius, or up to a day’s drive. Define this distance for your store and help your customers identify what fits into your company’s definition. In agricultural regions, you may surprise yourself with how much “local” product you already have to offer. Inform your team about growing regions and seasons so they can be prepared with answers. If it’s not local, perhaps it’s …

Regional: This is the step outside of the “local” sourcing radius that defines your region, such as Southwest, Rocky Mountain and Mid-Atlantic. This label expands your opportunity to provide produce that may not be growing locally, but is still available in your region. If the produce is neither local or regional, it is likely …

Seasonal: This is a term that describes things that are available in a traditional growing season. If you live in Boise or Bismarck, you probably can’t purchase local fresh produce for an extended season. In regions where agricultural access is difficult, advertising seasonally available produce is a great way to appear proactive and to educate customers while maintaining a reasonable price point. In the winter, root vegetables, hardy greens and citrus are all domestically seasonal — they’ll taste the best and be the least expensive for your customers.

Sustainable: Sustainable agriculture is something that can be a bit elusive at the commercial level. Although the USDA formally defined sustainable agriculture in 1990, a group known as Sustainable Table has a description that’s concise and comprehensible: “Sustainable agriculture is a way of raising food that is healthy for consumers and animals, does not harm the environment, is humane for workers, respects animals, provides a fair wage to the farmer, and supports and enhances rural communities.” Think happy cows, certified cage-free eggs, and Fair Trade and unionized farms for products to satisfy some of these requests.

Heirloom: There are three distinct definitions of this term, and a grocer would be safe to use the most lenient of the three, which refers to plants (cultivars) that originated prior to 1951, the year of the first widespread introduction of hybrids to the agricultural industry. Other food historians use the date 1945, or the end of World War II; still others insist on a cultivar at least 50 years old, while purists maintain the cultivar must be at least 100 years old. When someone requests an heirloom tomato, they’re requesting a variety that originated at least 50 years ago. While these tomatoes are delicious, they’re not known for shipping or storing well, and are often a challenge for grocers to maintain.

These five terms are now commonly used by customers and aren’t going to fall out of use any time soon. If your retail teams and merchandisers can address the differences with signage and education, your store will appear even more customer-friendly. By providing information transparently and proactively, your team will become a wonderful resource for your customers, who will buy again.

Bon Appetit!

If your retail teams and merchandisers can address produce differences with signage and education, your store will appear even more customer-friendly.