Fresh Ideas: Dodging the Bullet That Could Stop the Charge
This month’s issue of Fresh Cut highlights the rapid market growth for value-added produce and efforts to squelch the one thing that can stop that growth in its tracks.
We’re featuring two companies that have achieved remarkable increases in fresh-cut visibility. San Miguel Produce (p. ???) is emblematic of the category’s growth in general and for dark leafy greens in particular. In two decades, San Miguel has gone from giving away samples to adding production capacity to keep up with demand created by a growing passion for healthier eating.
On the retail front, Hy-Vee Stores, headquartered in Iowa, demonstrates all the ways fresh-cut makes its presence felt, which we explore in a story on page XX. I first visited a Hy-Vee in Sycamore, Ill., last year on a family visit and was instantly impressed with the variety. Fresh-cut was everywhere — bagged salads, salad bars, meal solutions and in-store eateries themed to ethnic tastes. I would expect to find such a presentation in Chicago or the suburbs, not in a community 60 miles away.
A foodborne illness can be the one event that can deter the advance of even the most successful food company. That’s why we continue to pay close attention to the issue in stories that update the progress of the Food Safety Modernization Act (p. XX), describe the Rapid Recall Program (p. XX) and outline methods for in-plant pest control (p. XX.)
I am privileged to have two opportunities to learn much more about the world of fresh-cut, including food safety. I’ll be attending this year’s Fresh-Cut Products Workshop at the University of California Davis and the annual Produce Marketing Association Summit in New Orleans. Look for reports and updates from both events in the pages of this magazine, on freshcut.com and on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
