Karin will be responsible for Innovative Fresh’s quality monitoring programs in The Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and Germany.

Karin’s extensive background in quality management includes over 12 years of close working relationships with key retailers, traders and growers in the produce industry. Most recently, Karin was quality manager for Eosta, with responsibility for quality of Eosta’s extensive product range. Prior to her role at Eosta, Karin served as technical manager for The Greenery UK.

Karin’s deep expertise with quality programs will allow us to further professionalize our quality monitoring programs, resulting in even better service to our retail and fresh produce partners.

Karin will greatly enrich the Innovative Fresh team.

Maud Jentjens & Jelger de Vriend

Heemskerk, 11 January 2012

As share of income, we deliver today the cheapest food in history. To put it more negatively; the “food at home” industry has consistently been loosing market share in the consumer market for more than 80 years.

Why have we been unable to seduce consumers in spending a considerable part of their income on food at home?

For too many years we’ve primarily focused on delivering competitively priced products. We’ve been very good at reducing costs and increasing productivity. Food had to be cheap, widely available, safe and it had to look good. And we delivered.

However, when consumers give their final verdict about fruits and vegetables they rarely talk about price and appearance. Sure, price and appearance are important to drive initial sales. But how about that final verdict from the consumer? After consumption?

Have you ever met a consumer that said; “I ate an apple and it tasted terrible. But I am satisfied because the price was low”. No, I am pretty sure you haven’t.

We continuously find that more than halve of that final consumer satisfaction in fresh produce comes from flavor. Price and appearance play only a small role in that final verdict.

That final verdict about fresh produce is mostly driven by flavor. We repeatedly find that if flavor is right, price is largely irrelevant. And when flavor is great, superior consumer satisfaction will lead to repeat purchase.

It is this repeat purchase that increases fresh produce consumption.

We want consumers to have a great flavor experience and come back for more. That is how we increase consumption. Sales of many seasonal and impulse products is purely driven by this flavor experience and by intensified repeat purchasing.

If we want to increase fresh produce consumption and drive produce sales we have to deliver a superior flavor experience.

André Michelin said it in 1926 when he introduced the Michelin stars; “exceptional flavor is worth a special journey”. The best journey we can let our consumers make is back to their local store; for that superior produce flavor!

So if this year is going to give even more price pressure; is there a way out of that discussion? We believe the answer is yes. And it starts with a much broader definition of “value”.

We generally have a narrow perception of consumer value. Most of the time, we consider it to be synonymous with “very low price”. But there is much more value to be added to the relationship between suppliers and key retail customers, and to the consumer. That is also what many full service supermarkets themselves do; don’t try to be continuously the cheapest but strengthen the relationship with your primary consumer by creating additional value.

So, how do we create value in the fresh produce world without being distracted by price?

Let’s start with a simple question; have you ever met a consumer that wants to buy bad tasting produce because it is cheaper? I didn’t think so. When “taste” is superior, “price” plays a minimal role. Anybody merchandising strawberries knows that the impulse character has little to do with price and everything to do with taste and smell.

Yet, instead of trying to give consumers products with great taste, our systems are focused on just meeting the minimum requirements. Think about it. We prefer varieties for their long shelf life, pretty much regardless of their taste. We harvest climacteric fruit as early as possible; even when it means that they never reach the optimal sugar content when ripe. We trade mango varieties that have a red color so that they look ripe, even though they are hard and contain fibers. Our quality systems are designed to assure that we bring products to the consumer with Brix levels that must be above a minimum; that is very far way from pursuing great taste. Meanwhile production is mostly driven by maximizing kilo’s. All this unfortunately contributes very little to satisfying the consumer.

By not focusing on optimizing quality and taste we have effectively helped the commoditization of our industry. To put it more positively; one of the biggest opportunities to decommoditize fresh produce is by focusing on quality and taste.

Because margins are thin as a result of the commoditization pressure, our fresh produce industry also gives itself little room to innovate. Sure, we’re not developing new mobile phones and of course it takes 7-12 years to breed a new tomato variety. But that should not keep us away from creating new forms and when it comes to innovation the only limiting factor is our imagination. There are so many ways to add value to the relationship between producers and retailers that it is amazing to see that we are mostly only able to discuss “price”.

A commitment to creating new levels of consumer value is the basis for a sustainable fresh produce world. This will require a concerted effort to drive innovation in the fresh produce world; from field to retail shelf.

We live in economically challenging times. But it is a great moment to go back to the essence of our business; to continuously deliver added value and to surprise the consumer with exciting and great tasting fresh fruit and vegetables.

Consumers reward superior quality by simply buying more. There are many examples that prove that a consistent focus on superior product quality across the cool chain leads to higher sales and profitability. Particularly, on items that are more perishable, this strategy can lead to enormous growth in sales. Focusing on quality in the retail channel is one of the best ways to add value and to drive sales.

On the cost side quality is having an equal impact. In the supermarket store alone, an average retailer will have shrinkage levels in fruit and vegetables of roughly 4-8%. With the millions of euros in sales that most retailers have it is clear how large the impact of quality is. For a retailer to optimize the cost of shrinkage is the single biggest opportunity to reduce cost in the cool chain. Actually, for all partners in the cool chain it is the single biggest opportunity to reduce integral costs.

It is very easy to see that investing in quality pays off; both in consumption and in costs. So why are we not all more committed to quality? How can we bring quality management and quality awareness to a higher level across the cool chain? If we are all focused on satisfying the consumer; how can we make quality management a key driver for consumer satisfaction?

We need to make quality management tangible!

That starts by taking our scientific understanding of how Perishables behave after harvest and elevate that. Instead of developing graphs of respiration rates at different temperatures or at different oxygen levels, we need to actually translate that information into a more actionable concept: Shelf Life Loss.

A temperature graph during transport only tells you if a certain temperature has been exceeded, but even the brightest professor can not estimate the effect of a specific temperature regime on Shelf Life Loss. For that you need to have mathematical formulas that calculate Shelf Life Loss. A number of leading companies in the industry is very advanced in developing these Shelf Life Loss models and incorporating them in RFID/Temperature technology. This will revolutionize the way we look at cool chains and perishables.

With control over Shelf Life Loss we will encounter another opportunity: to harvest products at higher maturity. This very often improves eating quality but by definition it shortens shelf life. With Shelf Life Loss under control we can start to optimize taste. The effect this can have on the perishables industry is enormous.

Collaboratively monitoring and managing Shelf Life Loss is a very powerful way to drive quality throughout the cool chain.

Once we control Shelf Life Loss of a specific product it is very easy to link that to shrinkage data in the retail store. Suddenly we no longer talk about scientific data such as respiration rates, but we talk Dollars and Euros. Suddenly we create a mutual and tangible responsibility and thus a shared accountability for quality in the cool chain and we can balance that with optimum eating quality.

I will even go one step further. When we are able to monitor Shelf Life Loss and we know the cost involved, we can translate this concept into product specifications. Retailers can then agree with their cool chain partners that all oranges arriving at their depot not only meet their normal quality specification, but that they also have a Remaining Shelf Life of, for instance, 5 to 8 days when stored at room temperature. That best guarantees optimum eating quality for consumers while optimizing shrinkage in the store and maximizing profit across the cool chain.

Science Fiction? Not really. Technologically we are not very far away from this world. Shelf life models are being developed and RFID/temperature integration is close to becoming commercially available. And leading retailers increasingly focus on “taste” as an important point of differentiation. More importantly we will need to all feel part of this Partnership for Quality; from field to retail shelf. We need to learn to deal with the transparency and responsibility it creates. We will need to move away from the world where temperature monitoring during transport is only done to “check” whether transport was according to specification; temperature monitoring has to serve optimization of shelf life and taste!

We should never forget; in the end we are all working for the consumer; let’s give her excellent products by revolutionizing the way we manage quality in the cool chain! In a Partnership for Quality.

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