Sainsbury’s has underlined its commitment to supporting the fresh produce category and educating its managers in handling and presentation techniques.
Helen Buck, retail director at the supermarket, told this week’s National Fruit Show Conference that its Great Produce Programme, introduced a year ago, was helping boost understanding among colleagues.
“I’ve been sponsoring our Great Produce Programme, in which we’ve been taking all of our produce managers – nearly 600 of them – out of our day-to-day business for five days over the course of the last nine months, and they’ve been learning about how we protect the quality in our stores and what you do to deliver that great quality into our business,” she explained.
The programme was introduced after research showed that consumers were less interested in widescale availability than quality produce. “We thought what they [consumers] wanted was all about availability and having the complete range available for as long as we can,” Buck said. “But what came back was it’s no good having apples on the shelves if they’re not the right quality.”
As part of the programme, Sainsbury’s linked each geographical region with one or two produce suppliers to give managers and colleagues the opportunity to visit and understand the process of getting produce to store.
Buck also reaffirmed the supermarket’s commitment to supporting R&D in farming – Sainsbury’s is again allocating £1 million to British farmers for research projects – and said she was “very proud” of the work of the Concept Orchard in evolving intensive planting, improving yields and quality.
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