With holiday demand for the JUICI™ apple from Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers registering on the Richter scale, this newer variety is now seeing great demand in more than 3,000 stores nationwide – and another 740 retail outlets will carry it in January.
According to OSRG’s Bruce Turner, in-store demos of JUICI™ have been enthusiastically received by consumers, with reactions always very positive.
“We’re constantly being told that this is an incredibly juicy apple with great flavor. It’s very crisp, very crunchy. Some shoppers have told us it’s their ‘favorite apple ever,’” Turner said. “It’s not often you have a piece of fruit that’s described as ‘exciting to eat,’ but that’s what we’re hearing over and over.”
Turner added that retail promos are echoing the feedback received recently at PMA Fresh Summit in New Orleans, where visitors to the OSRG booth told the team the JUICI™ is a winner.
Virtually everyone who samples the JUICI™, which is a cross between Honeycrisp and Braeburn, agrees it has the best attributes of both varieties – a unique flavor balance with crunch and juiciness.
To help its retail partners as distribution increases and more JUICI™ samplings are staged, Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers is providing a wide range of point-of-sales materials, including free-standing display bins, posters, colorful POS cards and customized materials. The apples are shipping in 27-pound Euro cartons as well as five-pound poly bags the increasingly popular two-pound resealable pouch bags
U.S. customers are also glad to hear that new JUICI™ trees will be in production over the next two years, and volume of the apple will nearly triple, and Turner said while the company’s current focus is marketing the JUICI™ across North America, it is also watching demand grow in Asian markets. Holding exclusive marketing rights worldwide, Oneonta has trees in quarantine in the Southern Hemisphere that will ensure a year-round supply.
For additional information:
Scott Marboe
Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers
Tel: 509-888-5120