Five Factors That Affect Organic Produce Profit

Prices: Retails are always the top reason that determines whether a customer buys an item or passes it up. Most consumers have slammed the brakes on their expenditures, and food spending is usually the first to be adjusted on their budget. Prices play a vital role during rising inflation. If retails are out of the affordable range, customers will simply not make purchases.

Turnover: Obviously, the faster produce sells, the less shrink will occur. This is especially true for the more sensitive items like leafy greens, berries, or mushrooms. When the product lacks movement on display and sits on inventory in the back-room storage, the less it has an opportunity to sell through the retail system. It must have rapid turnover to prevent waste.

Shelf Life: After harvest, produce is living on borrowed time. With organic produce, the freshness deteriorates at a much faster rate and has fewer days to sell at the store level. This is because no chemicals or preservatives are added to organically grown product. Therefore, the shelf life through harvesting, packing, shipping, and displaying has very limited staying time up until it sells.

Handling: Since organic produce is more sensitive in many ways, the way it is managed and maintained plays a vital role. The quality of its appearance will easily show on display as to how the product was handled. There has been sequence of events where cartons of products have been tossed around on a cart or the floor during stocking duties. The slightest mishandling of organics will easily damage it and clearly show up on display.

Shrink: The pricing, turnover, and limited shelf life of organic produce has many challenging levels in which to traverse. Those items that sit rather than sell wind up in shrink waste. The losses will show up after the product has been discarded. Meanwhile, shrink keeps eating away at the produce profit.