April 7, 2000

Vegetable growers must be flexible enough to embrace new business practices, new technology, and new ways of thinking to sell their produce successfully to large retail chains, a panel of experts said recently at the West Texas Vegetable Conference in Hereford.

The panel included John McClung, president of the Texas Citrus and Vegetable Association; Rusty Ingram, president of the High Plains Vegetable Growers & Shippers Council; and Bernie Thiel, a High Plains grower.

"Our restaurant market is growing," McClung said. "More folks are eating out. This market will help keep growers’ terminal markets alive. But in order to capitalize on the restaurant market, we need to embrace alliances that will enable us to supply the produce restaurant buyers demand.

"Supply alliances will be imperative in our dealings with large retail buyers (chains) of today and tomorrow. Unless they work together through alliances, small- and medium-size growers simply won’t be able to meet the supply demand of fewer, larger retailers. We must be flexible enough to embrace supply alliances in order to capitalize on growing consumer demand for fresh produce."

As growers embrace supply alliances, they must also consider new marketing options—such as a regional or area-wide sales force, said Rusty Ingram.

"We can work together to pool and stretch our supplies of produce over the 9- to 10-month marketing period that buyers prefer if we have an area-wide sales force working for us," he said. "We have to work together if we’re going to ensure our buyers a consistent, certified-safe product.

"Being certified-safe means we’ll have to adopt new processing and handling safety technologies, as well as the product identification, tracking and pricing technologies used by our buyers. These requirements aren’t going to go away, but we can adapt to them and adopt them more effectively if we work together as groups—rather than individuals."

Thiel told growers they must supply a quality product and be willing to "get in there and take care of business" with retail buyers—either as individual suppliers or as part of a supply alliance.

"There are several large retail chains to do business with in Texas alone, but the key to maintaining a good working relationship is being able to supply the product they demand," Thiel said. "Unfortunately, sales isn’t for everyone. So, it’s imperative that you know your buyers’ needs and expectations.