Indianapolis Fruit Co. launches three branding initiatives for retail

Indianapolis Fruit Co. has long been supplying whole and fresh-cut produce to foodservice customers in the Midwest, but retail products are a growing market, said Shane Towne, marketing and new business development coordinator for the company.

Indianapolis Fruit Co. is a broadline distributor that was founded in 1947. In 1997, the company combined operations with Piazza Produce, and 10 years later bought McCartney Produce. The distributor now manages more than 150 refrigerated trucks and four facilities with more than 200,000 square feet of warehouse space. Piazza Produce handles the foodservice distribution and Indianapolis Fruit Co. does the retail distribution.

To increase the visibility of its retail products, Indianapolis Fruit Co. is freshening up its fresh-cut brand in rolling out two new brands. Fresh-cut products will be sold under the gardencuts brand. The brand will include organic and conventional products – really anything that’s cut and packaged, Towne said. The gardenbest brand will include repacked or overwrapped produce, including tomatoes that come from the Indianapolis Fruit Co. tomato facility that are sanitized and sorted. The third brand initiative is the gardenorganic brand, which will be organic whole and overwrapped produce. Some of the gardenorganic products will be repacked with individual SKUs, and others will be two- or three-packs overwrapped on environmentally-friendly fiber trays, Towne said.

Customers will begin to see a changeover in the brands on April 1.

Indianapolis Fruit Co.’s gardencut retail products are distributed in 14 states and growing. It’s difficult to quantify the size of the fresh-cut operations at the company because there’s so much crossover among the different business units, but Towne said fresh-cuts and retail products make a good and growing percent.

“It’s definitely a growing portion of our business,” he said. “Fresh-cut has led us into new markets and complemented markets we’re already in.”

Towne said retailers are looking for ways to reduce costs, but although there’s a higher initial cost for fresh-cut products, it’s not worth the added liability for a retailer to try to do it in-house. Indianapolis Fruit Co. has been audited and has high food safety standards in place, which is a benefit to its customers.

“Any time you can be more of a full-service provider, it just helps that retailer out,” Towne said.



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