River Ranch Fresh Foods Works With Retailers on Store Brands

River Ranch Fresh Foods is the largest producer of private label fresh-cut salads in North America. It works closely with about 15 retailers and several foodservice distributors to provide store-brand labels to the end user.

River Ranch will work with retailer customers from the beginning stages of product development until the product goes on the shelves.

“The level of sophistication and needs of a customer are going to fluctuate,” said Jim Lucas, CEO and president of River Ranch Fresh Foods.

And what each of the private-label customers wants from River Ranch varies depending on the end user.

“Some will have an ultra-premium private label offering, and others may be focusing on a price point – more of a garden variety product,” Lucas said.

Some customers, for example, will have a strong infrastructure to set up product development and will want to augment their existing offerings into something a little different for their customers. Others want something brand new.

“We identify what they’re looking for, if it’s something new or is a version of an existing product,” said Mike Gillespie, vice president of sales for River Ranch. “If it’s brand new, we’ll bring it to our marketing team and do internal analysis, from taste testing to taking it to other folks to see what their reception will be.”

But there’s not too much of that going on these days. Most of what Gillespie is seeing is a blending of existing products and new mixes.

“A lot of what the ‘new’ products are are variations,” he said.

Brand Consolidation

In Europe, the fresh-cut salad industry has been around for 10 to 15 more years than it has in the United States, Lucas said. Those countries have had that much more time to deal with keeping consumers interested and keeping fresh-cut profitable.

“Europe has dramatically different offerings that are much more upscale,” Lucas said.

Some of those products include whole-meal replacements, microwavable salads and more options that consumers would see in high-end restaurants.

“It’s all tailored to the demographics of the consumer,” he said. “A lot of the innovation you see in Europe is above and beyond what we have here.”

Private labeling has been around for quite some time in Europe. There are very few national brands competing with each other with their own names.

“In our minds, it’s a foreshadowing of where the industry (here) is going to be headed,” Lucas said.

Massive consolidation and exclusively promoting in-store brands has driven the private-label trend in Europe.

“These retailers are spending billions consolidating their brands, so why not exploit it?” Lucas said. “Retailers are able to differentiate themselves with exclusive unique salads using (the store’s) own brand, rather than sitting with a Saturday newspaper trying to find the cheapest garden salads. It’s a win-win for the retailer and the consumer.”

Lucas suggested that anyone in the fresh-cut industry who spends time overseas should be looking at these mature markets to see how they’re progressing.

Foodservice

Though less than half of River Ranch’s product goes to foodservice distributors, it still makes up a large portion of the business. The lion’s share of foodservice customers are white-tablecloth restaurants that demand high-end product.

For foodservice, there isn’t the focus on packaging and merchandising there is with retail, Gillespie said.

“It’s hitting quality specification,” he said. “You’re dealing with more generic packaging and efficiencies.”

Gillespie said River Ranch is getting more requests for portion-controlled salads that chefs or other foodservice personnel can just open and put on the plate.

River Ranch is able to offer efficiency in another format. Not only is it involved with fresh-cut produce, it has a commodity business as well. This gives the foodservice distributors and produce departments a one-stop shop for their produce needs.

“A foodservice distributor, as well as a retailer, can literally fill their trucks with 70 to 80 percent of the needs of the department,” Lucas said.

Efficiency is the driving factor behind the foodservice shift to fresh-cut produce.

“More and more people are wanting to flush that labor out of the back rooms,” Lucas said. “Labor cost, labor availability and food safety are driving this trend.”

Quality Assurance

Just because its name isn’t on the bag, don’t expect River Ranch to get lazy with quality assurance.

When end consumers have a problem with a product, they don’t call River Ranch. They call the retailer. But that isn’t the end of the chain because the retailer calls River Ranch. And a problem for customers is a problem for River Ranch.

“We spend a lot of time, energy and money providing as safe an environment as possible,” Lucas said. “We think that there are far-reaching ramifications for a slip, and that’s why we spend the resources we do.”

When members of the industry take steps to provide safe product, it ends up helping the whole industry and not just that company, Lucas said.

River Ranch is vertically integrated and controls the product from the harvest crews to the delivery trucks to the coolers to the processing line.

“Food safety is the No. 1 challenge,” Lucas said. “And we’re able to control the entire chain until the third-party logistics to get it to the end consumer.”

River Ranch Fresh Foods has its own quality assurance team with an on-site lab. The internal staff is augmented by a third-party company, Primus Labs. River Ranch does its own continuous audits and some of its retail and foodservice customers ask for third-party audits of the facility.

“Generally, many of them do send teams in,” Lucas said. “But we’ve never had anyone with tighter restraints than what we impose on ourselves.”

Popeye Fresh

River Ranch doesn’t only do private labels and foodservice. The company also has its own brand: Popeye Fresh. These products include packaged spinach, spinach blends and kits and a full line of vegetable snacks. The Popeye brand uses the Popeye cartoon character, well-known for his love of spinach, on its packaging and promotions.

“We knew that 99 percent of people recognize Popeye, but what we found out is that there are very strong, positive associations that go along with that recognition,” said Leslie Tripp, director of marketing for River Ranch. “Consumers feel something about Popeye, he stands for something important. He is a unique symbol of a healthy, active lifestyle.”

For more information about River Ranch Fresh Foods, visit www. riverranchfreshfoods.com and www.popeyefreshfoods