As the UK enters its third heatwave in four weeks, the retailer has ordered extra supplies to meet an anticipated spike in demand after seeing record-high fruit sales in recent weeks
As the UK enters its third heatwave in four weeks, the country’s largest food retailer Tesco says it expects to sell nearly 4mn punnets of strawberries, 850,000 melons, 200,000 pineapples, and more than 2.2mn packs of grapes in just the next five days.
The group has seen record-high demand for fresh fruit in the past month, with an extended period of warm weather apparently resulting in millions of extra produce packs sold.
And with another period of high temperatures predicted for parts of the UK over the coming week, the supermarket says it has ordered extra supplies to meet another anticipated spike in demand.
According to the retailer, it saw an “unprecedented” near 10 per cent increase in overall demand for fruit over the past three weeks.
Among its top sellers have been bananas, berries, cherries, grapes, pineapples, and watermelons, all of which have sold more than expected. And there was record volume growth for berries, stonefruit, kiwifruit, melons, watermelons, pineapples, grapes, and bananas.
“The extra demand for fruit that we’ve seen during the recent heatwaves in the last month has been unprecedented and is the highest we’ve ever seen within a three-week period,” said Tesco’s fruit category buying manager Simon Reeves.
“The quality of the fruit from our growers including our berry and cherry growers here in the UK has been especially good this year on account of the extra sunshine and daylight hours, which has also helped create such strong demand,” he continued.
“We have been working with our fruit suppliers to make sure that our stores are well stocked as we expect demand to once again be very strong over the coming days.”
The news is encouraging from a health perspective, given that official NHS guidelines advise people to eat fruit and veg with high water content to improve their hydration.
Particularly good choices include melon and watermelon, because of their high water content, but also strawberries which are packed with antioxidants, as well as pineapple, peaches, oranges and cucumber.
Tesco nutritionist Natasha Maynard said: “As well as drinks, we also get some fluids from the foods we eat. Fruits such as watermelon, grapes, pineapples and berries have a high water content and also count towards your five-a-day.”
