Happy Mother’s Day
Oxnard: We had great demand for Mother’s Day fruit thanks to promotions at retail. We look forward to seeing that demand continue as strawberry shoppers shift into their Spring buying habits putting strawberries in their carts every week now. Our volume here in Oxnard continues to be consistent and quality is excellent. Reports from our QC team are very good as fields have fully recovered from recent rain we had. The plants are still very green and healthy, pushing blooms and very nice fruit this week and we expect more of the same as we work through this month. The forecast shows continued mild weather conditions ahead with daytime highs in the high 60’s-low 70’s and night time temps in the 50’s. We are really pleased with how things are progressing here and thankful for this volume carrying us well into the Memorial Day pull.
Santa Maria: Our weather forecast here is very similar to Oxnard, which is keeping us on track with our earlier volume forecasts. Daily and weekly numbers are increasing here, but still well behind our typical seasonal curve. The fruit looks and taste great! Sizing is very large with a nice sheen as you can see from the cover photo. This region will kick into some decent volume in June and we expect a nice long summer of promotable volume from Santa Maria.
The California Strawberry Commission shared updated crop forecasts and market data showing strawberries as a basket builder. Their research shows that when strawberries are in the cart, the average basket at the register increases significantly. That tells us that our strawberry shoppers buy more produce and more groceries overall, so be sure to keep that display stocked and at the front of the department all Spring and Summer long.
Their current projection below also shows statewide volume increasing significantly leading into Memorial Day. We are watching this closely, and not sure the timing of the northern district volume will line up with the projection on the chart below based on current daily numbers. This overall peak may shift a bit more into early June.
