Retail Opportunities Exist for Imported Organic Fruit

To David Posner, founder, CEO and president of Awe Sum Organics, challenges always bring opportunities, and such is the case with the novel coronavirus, Covid-19, currently sweeping the globe.

“This is a health crisis and people are focused on staying healthy,” he said.  “Eating organic food is definitely one way to engage in healthy practices.”

David Posner, founder/CEO/president, Awe Sum Organics

Posner said now may be a good time for retailers to focus attention on organics and make sure they are offering more organic fruits and vegetables for their shoppers. Awe Sum Organics, which is in Santa Cruz, CA, has been specializing in imported organic fruits for 35 years.

Posner began selling organic fruits while in high school in the 1970s, connecting local organic growers with consumers through the Santa Cruz farmer’s market. After graduation, he expanded his business by selling to health food stores and to other farmer’s markets in California. Soon customers were asking for off-season fruit and Posner started looking in other areas of the world to source organics.  It was in 1985 that he officially launched Awe Sum Organics.

Today, he represents organic fruit growers in many parts of the world, most notably from the Southern Hemisphere countries of Argentina, Chile and New Zealand.  But Awe Sum also imports in season from Peru and Italy and offers organic citrus year-round from the United States.

David Posner, founder/CEO/president, Awe Sum Organics

This spring season sees the company’s pear and apple imports from South America taking center stage with New Zealand kiwifruit not far behind. Earlier this month, he told OPN Connect that “as of right now, we don’t anticipate any disruption in our supplies. We have ocean containers on the water headed this way,” he said, noting that shipping via water is “very carbon friendly. Shipping a container of fruit from the Southern Hemisphere uses one-12^th of the carbon that is used to ship a truckload of fruit across the country.”

Posner is a strong advocate of doing what’s right for both the body and the planet, which comes across loud and clear during an interview about fruit supplies.

Turning his attention to Awe Sum’s current sales board, he revealed that the company is on the front end of its organic pear deal from Argentina and will have good supplies through May and June. “We have been working with the same grower in the Rio Negro Valley of Argentina for 20 years. He’s a really good grower.”

David Posner, founder/CEO/president, Awe Sum Organics

They started with Bartletts in March and will feature a half a dozen varieties over the next couple of months including Red Bartletts, D’Anjou, Bosc and Autumn Bartletts, which should sneak into July. “The pears are really exceptional this year,” Posner said. “They have great eating quality and are totally awesome.”

New crop organic apples from Argentina and Chile will join the fruit party in earnest in May and provide opportunities through July. Awe Sum Organics will feature several varieties including Gala, Granny Smith, Fuji, Cripps Pink, Braeburns and what Posner calls an “heirloom” Red Delicious. “It’s the variety that earned the ‘delicious’ name back in the day.”

The Awe Sum founder said it is the freshness of these apples that set them apart from what is coming out of the United States during the late spring/summertime period.  Of course, U.S. apples are harvested in the fall and sold from controlled atmosphere storage throughout the following year.

David Posner, founder/CEO/president, Awe Sum Organics

In this first week of April, Awe Sum was finishing up its winter grape deal from Peru and would be out of organic grapes until its Mexican deal starts up in mid-May. The company will have several organic red and green seedless grape varieties, including a limited amount of organic Candy Snap, one of the new, high sugar varieties that the grape industry has been transitioning to over the last several years.

And waiting in the wings is Awe Sum’s New Zeland kiwifruit deal with Zespri. ‘We have been a distributor of Zespri’s organic kiwifruit for many years,” Posner said, noting that shipments will begin in mid to late May. He raved about New Zealand’s green and Sun Gold varieties stating that the program pays very close attention to the percentage of “dry matter” making sure it only ships very high-quality product.  The New Zealand deal runs from May into October at which point Awe Sum switches to kiwifruit from the United States and Italy.

Commenting again on the novel coronavirus and the opportunities it has presented, Posner said there has been some disruption in the company’s regular business as a few customers have altered their buying and merchandising habits to deal with the issue in their own ways, which can mean eliminating SKUs.  “But there are some great opportunities out there for retailers that want to focus on organics,” he reiterated.

From a business perspective, Posner said Covid-19 has resulted in the Awe Sum team all working from home, and it has required him to alter his travel schedule. “I do a lot of traveling internationally, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. I like to go down and work with my growers and help them with their organic practices. In fact, I postponed a trip to Argentina in the middle of March. I wasn’t worried about going down there but I was worried about airports shutting down and I might not be able to get back.”