Part of that might be due to some of the more grassroots marketing efforts Shanley has put in place to promote the unique form of lime, including placing finger limes in the kits of home meal delivery kit company Blue Apron. “It was huge for us because thousands and thousands of consumers who’d never heard of a finger lime heard it about it through them and they got to cook with it in their box,” Shanley Warren says. In addition, the popular site eater.com also shot a finger lime video at the Shanley Farms ranch to show their site’s users what the lime was all about. “And it too was a lot of exposure for finger limes which we hadn’t experienced up until that point,” says Shanley Warren.
The popularity of the pearl
In turn, that’s prompted Shanley to not only boost production for its 2017 season, which starts in June and runs until January 2018, but also launch new packaging of the product. “This year we’ll launch Finger Lime Pearls—so we’re extracting the pearls out of the finger lime rind and jarring it so you can just purchase the pearls,” says Shanley Warren. “Until now you had to manually get the pearls out but we’ve designed a machine to do that.” The refrigerated jar is anticipated to last for three weeks. New varieties coming
In addition, Shanley is bringing in two new micro citrus varieties of trees growing finger limes from Australia: the Byron Sunrise, which will grow red limes, and the D Emerald, producing emerald green limes. However the trees won’t be producing limes for another five years approximately. But it is tapping into an element of the finger limes customers seem to appreciate.
“Our customers love color,” says Shanley Warren. “Our current finger limes will produce different colors throughout the year—sometimes they’re green, sometimes they’re champagne colored, sometimes they’re bright pink. It’s based on possibly the temperature when the flowers bloom seems to affect the color of the pulp harvest.”
For more information:
Megan Shanley Warren
Shanley Farms
Tel: +1 (805) 234-8533
info@shanleyfarms.com
https://shanleyfarms.com/