Less than two years on from its launch, a fresh produce club for traditional greengrocers in Italy has just signed up its thousandth member and is now planning to foster even better standards among those retail partners.
Maestri della Frutta (Masters of Fruit), a joint venture project that involves leading brands Dole, Marlene and Valfrutta, was conceived as a means to encourage and promote the professionalism of Italy’s greengrocers and small-scale retailers when it comes to selling high-quality fresh fruit and vegetables, while at the same time placing a premium on three of the market’s foremost fresh produce trademarks.
The group’s membership is spread across 11 regions and 45 provinces, making it one of the country’s most extensive marketing and sales networks for fresh produce.
“Maestri della Frutta is bringing innovation to a distribution channel that has certainly not been overtaken and has undergone a major evolution,” commented Roberto Della Casa of Bologna-based consultancy Agroter, which manages the project.
According to figures published by the Italian Ministry for Economic Development, traditional, specialised retailers saw growth during 2011-2014 both in terms of their share of domestic consumption (up 2 per cent) and number of outlets (up 5 per cent).
“[These are] real signs of life that demonstrate a desire not to give way to modern retail and also to focus on new concepts as category leaders and boutique stores.”
Via a network of area managers, Maestri della Frutta has spent the past two years convincing prospective members to go the extra mile in terms of stocking best-quality produce.
“Together, those regional representatives have reportedly already invested more than 15,000 hours in providing a personalised service on behalf of Maestri della Frutta, exchanging views and information, distributing sales and marketing material and generally building up a relationship of trust between producers and greengrocers,” Della Casa explained.
Going forward, the plan is to develop further the idea of traditional retail outlets as bastions not only of that premium product quality but also human interaction and personal service, while at the same time making use of new methods of interactive, digital communication.
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