Los Alamitos, CA(October 2019) – The holidays are right around the corner and soon shoppers will be thinking about what to serve their holiday guests.
With the growth of plant-based eating, many of today’s shoppers are looking for more meatless main dishes to include on their holiday table. One-third of Americans consider themselves to be “flexitarians”—someone who fluctuates between enjoying a plant-based and a meat-based diet1. In fact, 60% of people are more likely to include at least one plant-based main dish on their holiday table than in the past2. This means shoppers will be stocking up on a variety of fruits and vegetables for the center of the plate this year, so be sure to offer options that will delight their senses.
“As more shoppers are looking for meatless main dish alternatives, it’s important for retailers to make plant-based foods a focus in their stores,” says Alex Berkley, director of sales for Frieda’s. “Frieda’s Colored Cauliflower is a great option for holiday main dishes such as whole roasted colored cauliflower with salsa verde. Cauliflower continues to explode in popularity, and adding colored cauliflower to your produce set will keep you on trend with consumers,” Berkley says. Just as versatile as white cauliflower, colored cauliflower—which comes in purple, orange and green—will add a colorful splash to the holiday table.
Veggie-based mains are perfect for “Friendsgiving” celebrations that continue to grow in popularity – particularly among millennials who are looking to try something new and “show off” their skills with innovative dishes. This gathering among friends means the Thanksgiving holiday has transformed into multiple meals. Sixty-five percent of people plan to attend multiple holiday celebrations,3 so shoppers will have more opportunities to buy and cook and will seek out veg variety when they shop.
Add signage and recipe cards to round out a full-scale display of plant-based main dish ideas in your produce department—it’s a sure way to inspire shoppers.
Contact your Frieda’s sales manager for more ways to maximize your plant-based opportunities in stores this holiday season!
Gervis, Zoya. “One Third of Americans Consider Themselves ‘Flexitarian’.” New York Post, 26 Oct. 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/10/26/one-third-of-americans-consider-themselves-flexitarian/.
C+R research, 2019
Wakefield research, Sept. 2018
About Frieda’s Inc.
Frieda’s Specialty Produce has been inspiring new food experiences for friends, families and food lovers everywhere since 1962. From kiwifruit and dragon fruit to Stokes Purple® sweet potatoes and habanero peppers, Frieda’s has introduced more than 200 unique fruits and vegetables to the U.S. marketplace. Founded by produce industry trailblazer Dr. Frieda Rapoport Caplan, subject of the 2015 documentary “Fear No Fruit,” the family company is owned and operated by Frieda’s daughters, Karen Caplan and Jackie Caplan Wiggins, in Orange County, California. Find Frieda’s on Facebook, @FriedasProduce and Friedas.com. Inspire. Taste. Love.
Los Alamitos, CA(October 2019) – PMA Fresh Summit 2019 is here, which means making connections, spotting innovation and having fun. But it can also mean the onset of hangovers, headaches and foot blisters. While you’re out walking the convention floor, look for your friends in purple. Frieda’s team will be in and around the convention center at the ready with aids to help you “survive” the nation’s largest produce convention.
“Part of our culture is going above and beyond, and we want to bring that to PMA with us this year,” says Alex Berkley, Frieda’s director of sales. For years we have been saying, “What if we can equip our clients with a trade show survival kit, to help them get the most out of the show?”
Well this year, it’s happening! Frieda’s on-site teams will be armed to address survival needs for PMA attendees. Have a headache from that extra cocktail last night? Got some heartburn from the guacamole you just sampled? Is a blister from those new shoes holding you back? Just look for the folks in purple. “It will be easy to spot our teams,” Berkley says. “We’ll be the ones in purple shirts that say ‘Got your back’ because Frieda’s always has your back.” We’ll see you at the show.
About Frieda’s Inc.
Frieda’s Specialty Produce has been inspiring new food experiences for friends, families and food lovers everywhere since 1962. From kiwifruit and dragon fruit to Stokes Purple® sweet potatoes and habanero peppers, Frieda’s has introduced more than 200 unique fruits and vegetables to the U.S. marketplace. Founded by produce industry trailblazer Dr. Frieda Rapoport Caplan, subject of the 2015 documentary “Fear No Fruit,” the family company is owned and operated by Frieda’s daughters, Karen Caplan and Jackie Caplan Wiggins, in Orange County, California. Find Frieda’s on Facebook, @FriedasProduce and Friedas.com. Inspire. Taste. Love.
Los Alamitos, CA(October 2019) – Across the store, shoppers are looking for ways to add more festive cheer into their everyday items during the holiday season—from peppermint-flavored drinks to snowman-themed tissue boxes. It’s time for the produce department to join in on the festive fun!
For the first time, Frieda’s is offering a collection of limited-time offer (LTO) holiday alliums, including pearl onions, cipolline onions and a special edition of 6-ounce shallots, all featuring festive labels and packaging in easy-to-open clamshells that showcase the product. The holiday labels are decked out with red and gold ornaments that are sure to grab your shoppers’ attention and drive Q4 sales for your store.
Research shows that shoppers are more willing than ever to spend additional money on the best ingredients. In fact, 69% of shoppers agree that it is worth splurging on better ingredients during the holidays1, according to research done in partnership with C+R in 2019. Surveys reveal that 63% of consumers say they are likely to trade up to shallots and 48% of consumers are likely to trade up to cipollines1 from traditional onions.
Use Frieda’s eye-catching LTO holiday packaging to sway shoppers to switch!
“We know that the fourth quarter is a great time to inspire shoppers and make the most of the holidays,” says Cindy Sherman, director of marketing and innovation at Frieda’s. “Consumers are more likely to leave these décor-worthy items out on their countertops, leading them to use these up faster and come back to your store to repurchase.”
Call your account manager today for helping making your produce department a holiday destination!
About Frieda’s Inc.
Frieda’s Specialty Produce has been inspiring new food experiences for friends, families and food lovers everywhere since 1962. From kiwifruit and dragon fruit to Stokes Purple® sweet potatoes and habanero peppers, Frieda’s has introduced more than 200 unique fruits and vegetables to the U.S. marketplace. Founded by produce industry trailblazer Dr. Frieda Rapoport Caplan, subject of the 2015 documentary “Fear No Fruit,” the family company is owned and operated by Frieda’s daughters, Karen Caplan and Jackie Caplan Wiggins, in Orange County, California. Find Frieda’s on Facebook, @FriedasProduce and Friedas.com. Inspire. Taste. Love.
Does your place of work host visitors? Do you feel like every time a group is coming to visit that you give a different tour of your offices or facility? Or do you offer a standardized experience? Often it depends on who is giving the tour.
My company is housed in an 80,000 square foot produce distribution center, including 20,000 square feet of offices, and we get visitors often—either customers or suppliers or friends in the industry. This week we are gearing up for the largest annual U.S. produce trade show at the Anaheim Convention Center (not far from our offices). Since we are the geographically closest produce warehouse, we have more than a dozen visitors and tours scheduled.
As a company, we have always put a lot of effort into planning and organizing special events. In fact, we consider all “visitors” a special event. From experience we know that the effort we put in ahead of time to plan visits and engage all the right players in our company will pay off in terms of a positive visitor experience.
Here’s how we do it. Several weeks before any visit, we have a planning meeting where the host (whomever has invited the visitor) meets with a team and reviews the plan. We hammer out things like arrival time, whether they get a warehouse tour (or not), whether they get an office tour (or not), who they will meet with and what kind of refreshments we want to serve them. Do they get a level 1, level 2 or level 3 tour? What gift do they get when they leave? (We know everyone is a consumer of our product, and we want them to leave with a memory they can refer back to when they get home).
Our number one goal is to treat every visitor to our facility like a visitor to our home. We put their name on the marquee when they enter the lobby, so they immediately feel welcome. (Most of our visitors ask to have their photo taken in front of the marquee—they get excited to see their name in lights!)
Our meeting room is always prepped with refreshments, notepads and paper. Sometimes our meetings are at one of the two community tables we have in our offices; we meet there so visitors can feel the vibe of the company and are not closed in by a conference room with a door.
Another best practice we have—that truly falls in line with our company culture—is that everyone in the office gets introduced by name to all visitors. It makes our team members feel important, and it allows our visitors to see that we are truly a family and everyone is valued.
We have checklists, we send out company announcements the day we’re welcoming people, and it’s like “all hands on deck” to greet our visitors.
How does that pay off?
Visitors get a fabulous tour experience. Almost every single person who visits Frieda’s comments that “everyone who works at Frieda’s seems so happy!” They walk away with a feeling that they are important and that we value our business relationship with them (and we DO!). In fact, one of our best practices is that we want either my sister Jackie or me personally to say hello to every visitor. Nothing says “family business” with hands-on management more than a “hello” from one of the owners.
But the benefit has been that our team members feel more engaged. More valued. More important. They oftentimes get to meet our biggest clients and our most important growers. It works especially well when a grower visits and we take them into accounting and can say, “Patricia and Millie are the ones who make sure your bills get paid quickly.” Both the grower and our staff are happy to put a name with a face.
So, if you have visitors to your facility or business, perhaps you should consider standardizing your process for giving tours while still conveying that personal touch. I have a consultant who always says, “Systems and Processes: there shouldn’t be 10 or 100 ways to do something. There should be one way—your way. The best way.”
It may take a little more time up front, but what I’ve learned over the years is that the more time we invest before an event in the planning and getting alignment with our team, the better the performance and user experience. This applies not only to tours. It’s true for any project or event.
Karen
I was reading through a business book and saw this quote: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It caught my eye. And, perhaps because I’ve focused on being extra self-reflective during the last week, I have given this a lot of thought.
Some people say that they have a public or business persona and that they are completely different in their personal lives. You know what I mean—they say they are super-organized, driven and type A in their business life, but at home they claim they are super-chill. I actually don’t think that’s possible.
I consider myself and my habits when stating this. After much self-reflection, I’ve realized that the habits I have for living are quite the same in the professional realm and my personal life. For example, it is no secret that I tend to make decisions quickly, based on my gut. I don’t often enough spend time gathering a lot of data—it’s like in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. In fact, I have to work very hard to remind myself to ask questions, gather data and look for any contrary concerns. This applies to both my personal AND professional life. After having some bad personal experiences, through trial and error, I now push myself to pause and not move so quickly.
How you do anything is how you do everything.
The same applies to my work life—I have found myself coming to quick conclusions and later realizing that I should have paused, asked more questions, slowed down and looked for the opposing view.
I consider myself a pretty hard-working, competitive, goal-oriented person, yet I have had limited success in achieving my personal fitness goals. So, this quote of “How you do anything is how you do everything” made me ask myself, “Why have I not lost the weight I say I want to lose? Why have I not increased my cardio fitness and the strength that I strive for?”
That’s when I realized that I lose interest and lack discipline. After all, when it comes to personal fitness, it is quite obvious that consistency and discipline are imperative when you have fitness goals. So what would it take for me to achieve these personal, physical goals?
From my business background, I know that best practices would involve writing down my goals, breaking them down into specifics. I’d need to: List actions I would have to take on a daily and weekly basis to achieve my goals. Record my activities daily and then recap them periodically to chart my progress. Focus on high-performance activities (HPAs) vs. just activities (i.e., going through the motions).
But I realized something else was missing.
Who will I be accountable to? Obviously being accountable to myself has not allowed me to achieve my fitness goals so, for me, I think it’s best to have accountability to others. Maybe I need a small group of trusted advisors or “coaches” who I agree to report my progress and results to—and who will give me honest feedback. (And who won’t buy into to my excuses!)
As I thought about this different approach for myself in my personal fitness arena, I couldn’t help but reflect back onto my business life and what best practices could be used there.
Do I have my business goals written down? Have I broken those big goals down into smaller objectives and activities with desired measurable results? Am I tracking these goals and making course corrections if I am not on track to achieve them?
Who will I be accountable to about these goals? Or, if I don’t achieve my goals, what actions will I take to change the results? Will I adjust my goals, or will I be honest and take a look at my own leadership or my team’s capabilities?
How will I celebrate when I achieve my goals? Will I be disciplined enough to set new, higher goals and objectives?
How I do anything is how I do everything.
What about this mantra speaks to you? How do you feel about your personal goals? Do you apply the same best practices from business in your personal life? Do you have written goals that stretch you? Or do you just show up and do what you’re told, and you’re satisfied with the status quo?
Think about it. I sure do. As I craft my updated personal and business plan for 2019 and 2020, I will report back to you on how it’s working.
I hope you will consider doing the same.
How you do anything is how you do everything.
Karen
Most people know that Sunday night, Sept. 29 at sundown, marked the beginning of the Jewish New Year. The holiday is called Rosh Hashanah (translated means “head” of the year). Jews all over the world go to synagogue and say the same exact prayers. Whether in California or France, Australia or Brazil, we all have the same rituals.
One of the traditions of all religious services is that the spiritual leader (in this case the rabbi) gives a sermon. I think that is universal, no matter your religion.
So, Sunday evening as I sat in temple next to my sister Jackie, I listened intently to what our rabbi talked about.
Her message was about “appreciating the good, the wonder, and the beauty of what we have.” Of course this makes sense, because it is the New Year. New Year, new opportunities. New Year, new resolutions. New Year, new reflections. Her message was a “glass half full” message. It made me smile, as I thought about how easy it is to look at the negatives, the problems, the challenges you have. What if, instead, we looked at and focused on the positive?
Once Rosh Hashanah is over there is 10-day period of time, referred to as the Days of Awe, until the next Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is considered the holiest day of the year. It is a day that many Jews around the world fast (don’t eat or drink) from dawn until dusk, to remind us of those who have suffered before us.
The Days of Awe are a very special time to me. The Jewish tradition suggests that if there are any people in your life that you have had disagreements or challenges with, or there are unresolved issues, that you reach out and talk with those people, and speak the truth and offer forgiveness. So, as I sat in temple on Sunday evening, I thought about who in my life do I want to develop a richer relationship with, or want to resolve conflicts or misunderstandings? Or who do I want to have a deeper connection with? I made my mental notes and during the next week I intentionally plan to have conversations or spend time with those people.
I recall in past years that I reached out to various people (not all of them are Jewish) and it gave me a deep sense of satisfaction.
Do you have any people in your life, or who used to be in your life, that you feel you may have a nagging issue with? Or perhaps there has been a misunderstanding that you really wish was resolved. Maybe you just want to feel closer and spend time with someone. Whether you are Jewish or not, why not make a mental note of those people and send them a text, email or call them this week? Your conversation can be short or long. It can be, “I was thinking of you and wanted to say hi” or it can be an hour-long phone conversation.
Finally, my last ritual of the Jewish New Year period will be on Wednesday, Oct. 9, as the sun goes down and Yom Kippur ends. As I leave temple, I will enjoy some apples slices dipped in honey or honeycomb to symbolize the sweetness of the New Year. And then I will go to a friend’s house to “break the fast” with other Jewish friends and family.
Even if you are not Jewish, perhaps you can enjoy some of the traditions of the New Year. Be grateful for the positive people and things you have in your life. Make amends with those with whom you’ve had disagreements or misunderstandings. Don’t overeat and then break bread with family and friends to renew your bonds.
Happy New Year (L’Shana Tovah)!
Karen
P.S. In case you didn’t see this, our entire family was ecstatic on Rosh Hashanah, as The Washington Post ran this feature story on my mother Frieda and our entire family. [Read it here…]
Photo Credit: Sean DuFrene/Photographer
Los Alamitos, CA(September 2019) – Today’s shopper craves more plant-based meals than ever before (hello meatless Monday!). Be sure your produce section has everything your shoppers need to make produce the center of the plate this October 1—World Vegetarian Day.
Consumers want options, like meatless main dishes. In fact, a third of Americans consider themselves to be “flexitarians”—someone who fluctuates between enjoying a plant-based and a nonplant-based diet1.
“Shoppers are becoming more aware of their health and the positive impacts of having a more plant-centric diet,” says Karen Caplan, CEO of Frieda’s. “I have been vegan for about 9 months now and have experienced more energy, lower cholesterol and a lower overall body mass index (BMI). One of my favorite guilty pleasures is using Frieda’s jackfruit as a meat substitute for an amazing meatless stew, which is perfect for fall!”
Jackfruit, a.k.a. the world’s largest tree fruit, is a staple in plant-based cooking because of its ability to absorb flavor when cooked. Plus, it shreds like pulled pork! Shoppers also love Frieda’s Stokes Purple® sweet potatoes, a complete plant-based meal option that works well in curries, power bowls and vegetarian enchiladas!
Add signage to round out a full-scale display of plant-based meal ideas in your produce department—it’s a sure way to inspire shoppers. Visit www.www.friedas.com/recipes for ideas on ways to celebrate World Vegetarian Day and beyond!
Gervis, Zoya. “One Third of Americans Consider Themselves ‘Flexitarian’.” New York Post, 26 Oct. 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/10/26/one-third-of-americans-consider-themselves-flexitarian/.
About Frieda’s Inc.
Frieda’s Specialty Produce has been inspiring new food experiences for friends, families and food lovers everywhere since 1962. From kiwifruit and dragon fruit to Stokes Purple® sweet potatoes and habanero peppers, Frieda’s has introduced more than 200 unique fruits and vegetables to the U.S. marketplace. Founded by produce industry trailblazer Dr. Frieda Rapoport Caplan, subject of the 2015 documentary “Fear No Fruit,” the family company is owned and operated by Frieda’s daughters, Karen Caplan and Jackie Caplan Wiggins, in Orange County, California. Find Frieda’s on Facebook, @FriedasProduce and Friedas.com. Inspire. Taste. Love.
