Granny Smiths Mark St Paddy's Day

Granny Smiths Mark St Paddy's Day

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. You could say "holiday season" is over, but is it really? I mean, holidays happen year-round with Valentine's Day coming up in a couple of weeks, followed a month later by the big green holiday that brings out the Irish in everybody, St Paddy's Day!

And to mark the day, Stemilt Growers is celebrating with a showin' of the Green ...

BRIANNA SHALES ... "Yeah, well the 2016 apple harvest left us with a lot of larger-sized Granny Smith apples, which are naturally green in color, and so a really good tie-in for St. Patrick's Day. The larger size came true because of Mother Nature. She likes to deliver sometimes smaller-sized fruit, and sometimes larger-sized fruit. So, this year's crop is trending a little bit larger. So, we're trying to spur some sales on that particular size-range, for apples it's 72 and larger, and tie in the green color of the fruit ... with the GREEN holiday."

Stemilt's Brianna Shales says some grocery store produce departments will mark the event with the festive Leprechaun sticker right on the front of its "Apple Lover's" 5 pound pouch bags ...

BRIANNA SHALES ... "Definitely, and then I think we'll also have people that will want to use signage and balloons and different things to further enhance their display in the produce department."

Stemilt's success with a candy cane themed bag during the holiday season drove the company to add the festive St. Patrick's Day promotion of Granny Smiths for a limited time.

Granny Smith is the #4 selling apple in the U.S. with an average of 11% of apple category sales.

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