Midwest Produce Buying Season Kicks Off Strong

Wellness and healthy eating are driving Midwest consumers to buy local, fresh produce.

The produce sector in the Midwest is vast and diverse, and increasingly so with the expansion of controlled atmosphere growing. The region offers a cornucopia of opportunities to connect down the supply chain to the abundant resources it provides.

Although tradition remains important in the Midwest, wellness and healthy eating are increasingly driving consumers, making produce departments a health center for many shoppers, says Vince Mastromauro, Sunset Foods’ director of produce operations.

Sunset Foods, Highland Park, IL, operates seven stores in the northern suburbs of Chicago, five under its own banner and two under the Grand Food Center brand, which the company acquired in 2021.

Mastromauro recognizes his Midwestern shoppers want to explore healthy options, and he has been expanding the proportion of organic products Sunset carries, including converting his entire assortment of greens. “When I say I’m pushing more with organic, it’s when I see the opportunities that are being presented to me that are promotable,” he says. “It just seems like in the first three months, it’s been a lot.”

Argus Farm Stop operates in the college town of Ann Arbor, MI, as part of an operation that focuses on locally grown food. Dani Cavagnaro, produce manager, says consumers continue to focus on local food, and, as spring began, Argus was gearing up with spring radishes and leeks after starting greens from hoop, or high tunnel, fields.

Because the company focuses on local product, root crops dominated its assortment in the cold weather months, but because of the proliferation of hydroponic and greenhouse growers in the Midwest, more produce is available year-round, and Argus taps that source until Michigan dirt farming starts to deliver.

“We use hydroponic and greenhouse when soil-based farms aren’t operating, but we keep it balanced,” she says. “When spring approaches, we have to give priority to soil-based farms.”

WHOLESALE DEVELOPMENTS

The Midwest region faces challenges in line with the general produce community, but faces those challenges head-on.

In Detroit, MI, wholesaler Ben B. Schwartz & Sons recently launched a custom-built Enterprise Resource Planning platform, Ben B. Access, expanding its legacy system. The company developed the platform to expedite orders, deliver with greater precision, automate administrative tasks, and analyze data that helps the company better predict future purchasing decisions.

Technology can help keep the business moving forward effectively. Bill Loupée, chief operating officer at Ben B. Schwartz, says the company’s robust produce offering has provided a full range of fruit and vegetable commodities to customers and wants to keep doing so as effectively as possible.

“What has changed is the work behind the scenes, where we’re finding new ways to build in additional value by implementing solutions to make sure we’re only delivering the freshest produce, such as stripping our tomatoes to remove excess foliage to deliver the highest quality,” says Loupée. “However, we’re also implementing new tools and solutions, whether it’s new packaging or custom ERP software, to alleviate customer pain points where we can while also leaning into programs that give back to our local community.”

Jordan Vande Guchte, vice president of sales for Superior Produce, Hudsonville, MI, characterizes the company as having an alphabetically broad diversified produce shipping, packing, repacking, and sales organization, purveying everything from asparagus to zucchini.

Vande Guchte says the asparagus category continues enjoying growth. It’s the company’s “first harvest commodity and the strong lead into our season. Michigan ranks first in asparagus production by state, and we’re proud to lead that charge: hand snapped, all edible, sized true and fresher by miles. Grass that’s tender, juicy, with a bit of sweetness and balanced by mild, earthy taste.”

In the squash category, the spaghetti variety that ballooned over the past decade remains strong, but has fallen behind butternut, which reigned previously. Superior Produce adjusts its acreage continually to pace consumption trends and does so in squash, but Vande Guchte says he believes spaghetti squash will continue to duel with butternut, as people continue to try and eat healthier.

“I personally have faith it will surpass butternut again at some point,” he says, noting, “it’s just a matter of when the next wave of health-conscious consumers realize the obvious noodle substitute comes in a hard shell.”

THE LOCAL ANGLE

Chad Buurma, president, Buurma Farms, Willard, OH, says Midwest demand has been consistent with the categories handled by the operation, including radishes, beets, lettuces, parsleys, southern greens, sweet corn, green onions and celery.

“There haven’t been major changing trends in the commodities we handle,” says Buurma. “There’s always some slight shifts here and there. We try to keep an eye on that, and we adjust our planning schedules accordingly.”

Buurma says his customer base likes homegrown produce. “We’re fortunate to have a nice number of retail chain stores in the Midwest, and we’ve been fortunate enough to be suppliers of many of those retail chain stores. They like getting that homegrown, that locally grown name out there. They post signage in their stores, and they promote that, and I think that has really helped us out. It gives us an advantage in our growing season.”

Ken Korson, apple category manager and sales, North Bay Produce, Traverse City, MI, says good snow cover during a cold winter was helpful to growing conditions. Responsible for apples and asparagus, he says the cold conditions will lead to a somewhat late, but normal, bloom on the trees, but that the season still looks to be shaping up well.

Asparagus is having a normal start for North Bay. As for berries, early varieties of blueberries are starting to wake up, and the weather is warming up slowly. April and early May in Michigan can still have crop-damaging frost, but the big picture looks good. “We have to see what Mother Nature gives us,” says Korson.

Apples are one commodity the Midwest is known for, but the range of fruits and vegetables produced in the region is vast.

“Growers that we work closely with grow field corn, beans, wheat, sweet corn, and most notably, horseradish,” says Matt McMillin, business development specialist, J.R. Kelly Co., Collinsville, IL, which is a major horseradish provider. “Our region is a hotbed for horseradish and is unique with that vegetable only being grown in large quantities at a handful of places in the U.S.”

A majority of U.S. horseradish is grown in southwestern Illinois, so, while horseradish is popular in our area, we ship a large majority of our crop to the coasts, and it’s distributed all throughout the U.S.

Matt McMillin, J.R. Kelly Co., Collinsville, IL

He says that since an important peak season in 2024, consumers have been keeping up their purchasing.

“Demand is fairly steady to maybe slightly increasing for our produce market grade root,” says McMillin. “We had a good peak season with Passover and Easter, but we’ve also started to see some increased demand in our shrink-wrapped packaging line. We’re not sure if it’s due to a prolonged shelf life or branding capabilities, but shrink-wrapped roots have picked up some steam this year.”

He points out that the fall-to-spring season for horseradish had been kind.

“Horseradish harvest begins around November and ends around May,” says McMillin. “We had a little bit of a wetter fall that combined with a freeze into February, leading to a busy spring harvest. So far, the weather in the spring has been good, and planting and harvest have been going strong in March.”

Gumz Farms, Endeavor, WI, grows and ships onions, red and yellow potatoes, peppermint, spearmint, carrots, field corn and soybeans, says marketing specialist Alex Gumz, and she adds that core products have been particularly good.

“Over the past few years, Gumz Farms has experienced growth in the retail sector with consumer interest particularly in their onions and potatoes,” she says. “They now produce 40% of Wisconsin’s onions and 20% of the state’s potatoes, making them one of the largest producers of these items in the region.”

As is the case with many Midwest growers, Gumz gets a lift from the loyalty Midwesterners have to their agricultural traditions.

“There has been an increased focus on locally sourced produce, reflecting a consumer shift toward supporting regional agriculture,” she says. “With this, we have expanded our packing facility by approximately 40% to meet increased demand.”

Korson says locally grown produce has become more important in the region. Many retailers still want to feature local products, and, with food prices higher, local may have an advantage as retailers and consumers recalibrate their expectations on what they spend and why.

He adds, though, that retailers are looking for more uniformity of packaging, and North Bay has responded by shipping goods, such as berries, with just one label.

“Especially on the berry side, North Bay Produce offers a few different labels, so we carefully consider which label will best excite customers and retailers. A strong area of growth for us has been utilizing our state labels that have been designed to look like the state where the produce was grown. This way, consumers can quickly identify which products on the shelf are local.”

Buurma says his operation does some private label packaging, but in general, retailers want the local branding.

“They want to see the Buurma Farm or Holland brand label because that’s what identifies it as homegrown,” he says. “We try to put in our label as much as possible, and we get positive feedback from that.”

CHALLENGES

As elsewhere in the country, the Midwest faces the typical challenges, but some are unique.

“Over the past couple of years, there seems to be a tightening of prices or margins, probably due to the economy in general or inflation, which makes it tough on the farmers when their costs are also rising,” says McMillin. “In our area, good farmland is becoming harder and harder to find, which makes it more competitive to rent or purchase ground that may be needed for future crops.”

Nature underlies everything that emerges in the produce sector. Diane Smith, executive director, Michigan Apple Committee, Lansing, MI, says that although growing conditions have recently been fine, other factors influencing business have been a little tougher on growers.

Michigan is the second largest producer of apples in the U.S., behind Washington. About 40% of the crop is processed into other products. Michigan apple slices and juice are two of the processed products that are seeing great success in the marketplace.

Diane Smith, Michigan Apple Committee, Lansing, MI

“The weather so far has been good, as we always hope for a cold winter, then a gradual spring warm-up. The biggest factor in growers leaving the business is the cost of production, with labor costs being a huge chunk of that. Growers’ production costs are exceeding their returns. I just returned from Washington, D.C., having attended USApple’s Capitol Hill Day, and cost of production was just one of the topics we discussed with lawmakers.”

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Retailers Bring New Options to the Midwest

In some cases, larger retailers are bringing new options to the Midwest, especially BJ’s Wholesale Club, which has made the region a focal point for its growth. Although it stuck to the East Coast for many years, the past few years have seen extensive growth in the Midwest, making it a market where independent grocers, co-operatives, regional and transregional supermarket chains, supercenters and warehouse clubs all compete. Although Costco and Sam’s Club are well established in the region, the more food-oriented BJ’s is adding more clubs at a deliberate pace.

Meijer has been developing store concepts beyond its core supercenters and has introduced a new format to Independence Township, MI. Dubbed Independence Market, it is a smaller format store, at 50,000 square feet. The company developed a neighborhood market concept, first introduced in Detroit and later expanded in Michigan and then to Cleveland in 2023.

Meijer laid out the new Independence neighborhood market, which opened April 30, for ease of shopping, but with a broad assortment of everyday needs, but with an emphasis on local products.
“Independence Market is committed to serving our new neighbors with value and convenience that makes it easy to get in and out quickly,” says Robert Lajcaj, store director.

Still, Meijer hasn’t given up on its core supercenter format, opening three in Ohio, May 8. It also has been expanding the grocery store concept outside of Michigan, with a new such store opening in Gary, IN, last spring.

Headquartered in Grand Rapids, MI, SpartanNash acquired Fresh Encounter, a 49-store supermarket chain serving Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.