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‘CLEAN ONIONS’
e key to successfully merchandising onions, according to Ralph Schwartz, vice president sales, category management for Potandon Produce LLC in Idaho Falls, ID, is “de nitely quality, but in the form of clean onions.
“People don’t want to see a lot of skin or ake,” notes Schwartz. “Everybody has a di erent name they want to call it. ey don’t want to see onions that have a partial skin on them; that gives them the kind of right- out-of-the eld look. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with those onions. Americans shop produce by looks now instead of by taste and quality.”
Schwartz says cross-merchandising e orts should be approached with seasonality in mind. “I think that in the summertime a lot of people will cross-merchandise sweet onions with things like sweet corn or ‘grilling’ types of produce items. In the wintertime you are going to see people cross-merchandising them with potatoes, carrots, turnips and stewing types of vegetables.”
And sweet onions are a big factor in the category’s growth.
“I think we have seen the sweet onion category growing over the past 10 years,” says Schwartz. “It went from being a niche area with your Vidalias and Walla Wallas to more of a broad category, where you are seeing retailers carry sweet onions 52 weeks a year. It has become a regular part of their busi- ness. Some people only carry sweet onions; they don’t really carry conventional onions anymore.”
Sweet onions continue to be the most popular variety, agrees Mike Blume, sales, Keystone Fruit Marketing in Greencastle, PA, and he says business is moving in the right direction.
“Whether we are selling Vidalias, Walla Wallas, imported sweets from Peru and Mexico, or domestically grown sweets from California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Texas or Georgia, our customers demand sweet onions 52 weeks a year,” says Blume. “So having sweet onions from so many locations allows us to always cover the needs of our customers.”
Onion sales for Keystone have increased every year over the past decade, and probably longer, adds Blume. “We o er a wide variety of onions from many locations, so we are able to ful ll the needs of our customers.”
To keep customers happy, produce departments should stock at least three vari- eties, according to Schwartz. He suggests:
“[People] don’t want to see onions that have a partial skin on them; that gives them the kind of right-out-of-the eld look. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with those onions. Americans shop produce by looks now instead of by taste and quality.”
— Ralph Schwartz, Potandon Produce
reds, whites and yellows. “But it is also market-speci c. If you go to a store in El Paso, TX, you’re going to have a predomi-
nantly larger display of whites and yellows, and maybe a small representation of reds. If you are looking at the upper East Coast, you
PRODUCE BUSINESS / AUGUST 2019 / 45