Baskets with mold, empty shelves, absent products-it is truly a nightmare week for berries in Italy.
For the fortnightly panel tests he conducts Italian Berry today we had a shopping list that included blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. Visiting stores in the Modena area like a normal consumer we found:
- ESSELUNGA: no blackberries for sale, only one basket of raspberries, plenty of blueberries;
- PAM: for both blackberries and raspberries only baskets with obvious mold were for sale, goods not purchased;
- DESPAR: blackberries good (only 3 baskets), for raspberries none of the 5 baskets were of decent quality to be purchased due to obvious presence of mold; no packages of blueberries;
- COOP: only blackberries overripe (not purchased), no blackberries nor raspberries on display;
- CONAD: good quality product availability for blackberries, raspberries and blueberries.
Bringing home some 20 packages of berries thus proved to be a more challenging undertaking than expected: the product was either missing or not of acceptable quality, forcing us to marathon through the various stores in search of the right product.
And not much different was the situation noted in Trieste during theSmall Fruits Observatory surveys conducted last Tuesday (9/13/2022).
Category management, relying too often on short-term horizons, unfortunately also produces these results: consumers dissatisfied with lack of product or unacceptable quality certainly do not help build the trust needed to sustain steady growth.
