Produce = Health at Sunset Foods

Upscale Chicago-area chain focuses on quality, variety and nutrition.

With food price volatility making consumers more vigilant, even a supermarket chain that largely serves affluent customers has to be price conscious. But Sunset Foods, headquartered in Highland Park, IL, a suburb on the North Shore of the metropolitan Chicago area, won’t cut corners at the expense of other key priorities its customers hold dear: quality, variety and healthfulness.

Vince Mastromauro Jr., director of produce operations at Sunset Foods, has things in hand. He and the produce managers throughout the seven-store chain know their customers well. Quality comes first, but Mastromauro’s approach to generating produce sales and store traffic is to grab shopper attention with promotional prices, while providing fresh fruits and vegetables in a colorful choreography.

Yet, the presentation isn’t the point, rather Mastromauro is intent on using promotion and visual appeal to underscore that what he offers tastes great and helps Sunset Food customers meet their wellness goals. Mastromauro says his customers are nutritionally and culinarily astute, and he spotlights products that are demonstrating particular strength, whether new to the marketplace or established.

“I promote what I feel, and what the industry says is trending healthwise,” he explains. “I’ve been able to duplicate a lot of these items on the organic side, as with broccoli and cauliflower.”

“There’s been opportunities on the organic side, too, which has been nice,” Mastromauro adds. “We’ve promoted kale a lot here recently. When I say promote: $1.99 or $2 a bunch is a pretty good price for fresh organic kale. And speaking of health, I’ve shifted all of our greens to organic and away from conventional.”

Shrink factors may be a little more concerning with the organics, but Mastromauro says he wants to encourage the healthier purchase, given his customers’ appreciation of wellness. With that being said, choice is important, so he offers both organic and conventional baby carrots, for example, as well as apples and some other commodities.

“There are a few you can move that way, and you’re not missing much in the resale,” he says.

PRODUCE IS MEDICINE

Sunset Foods customers, already cognizant of the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, are more aware today than ever before, Mastromauro says. “But the shift has gone toward a healthier mindset. You’ve got to use food, such as produce, as your medicine. I think that mindset has definitely resonated here in the last four or five years.”

“We offer so much variety that your vitamins are here,” he says. “You might as well take advantage of it. Your pathway to health is through the produce department.”

Health has propelled produce at Sunset Foods to the top rank of departments in the company and, on an individual basis, has boosted various segment sales, especially berries.

“The berry category for us is the No. 1 commodity, sales category in the whole company,” he says. “I’m so proud of that.”

CALENDAR CHANGES

Mastromauro notes a positive note to the early part of 2025 was that the prices available on organic apples and citrus gave him the chance to launch more promotions, with red and green leaf lettuce another commodity he could price and market to move. In combination, he was able to promote conventional and organic celery, as well as peppers.

“The pepper market was rough in the beginning. Now, we’ve been able to promote peppers, peppers in the bag and also all the bell peppers, organic and conventional. And that’s the nice thing, I can go on ad and run organic and conventional, and I’ve convinced my managers that it’s two different customers,” Mastromauro says.

The inclusion of both organic and conventional in Sunset Foods promotion can maximize response to a product category. Then, with ads online, Mastromauro has been able to expand and call attention to more items and market to greater effect.

Still, quality is the key. “We’re always going after quality first,” he says. “Then, we give value. We rarely give things away. As long as we’re holding up the quality aspect, we’re good.”

GRABBING ATTENTION

Price volatility forces Mastromauro to watch the market carefully, ensuring he can properly entice consumers whenever the opportunity arises.

“We’ve just been trying to promote what’s actually promotable,” he says. “It was a rough start to the season, both for vegetables and fruit. With tariffs, it’s even more of a challenge.”

Recent promotions featured citrus — heirloom, navels, cara caras, Halos — and different vegetables, from zucchini to green beans, romaine hearts, head lettuce. There’s also been some tomato opportunities and strawberry as well.

“For me, it’s about tonnage. If I can get items that I can sell multiples of, that’s what I’m going to do. And I’ll run those for a few weeks, if I have to, just to get the traffic going through the department. I’d never want to just promote a seasonal item one time and skip it for two weeks. It’s gotta be weeks in a row to get the traffic.”

On the citrus side, he said demand for Sumo oranges has been particularly strong. “I didn’t even have to put them on sale,” he says. “I can’t keep them in stock. All seven stores.”

Tomatoes are a commodity that has expanded, and Mastromauro can merchandise the range of products in various combinations, such as placing bulk tomatoes and avocados together to drive volume. The winter tomato glut and corresponding deals allowed him to promote various tomatoes, including sleeve brown and heirloom.

“We have the bulk, and we build it up with the packaged,” he says. “You’re not going to leave the department without buying a tomato of some sort.”

The promotions are music to the ears of produce managers in Sunset Foods stores. “My guys love it, and we’ll tie in our Gotham green basil with that and try to get the extra sales on the other end,” says Mastromauro.

SEEKING CONVENIENCE

As much as Sunset Foods is fastidious about the merchandising of its bulk and packaged whole fruits and vegetables, it also has evolved its fresh cuts presentation. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the company offered salad bars. It shut those down, but Matromauro threw himself into building a deluxe assortment of fresh cuts in single and mixed varieties, creating 100 different recipes for stores to follow.
Sunset also takes fresh cuts from its primary produce supplier, Anthony Marano Co., to provide even more choice.

“Convenience is what it’s all about,” he says.

And not just in the produce section itself. Convenience is an element included in the available product assortment no matter where it’s positioned.

“When we have things out front, it’s got to be grab-and-go,” he says. “It should be like packaged grapes. It should be berries. So, the customer doesn’t have to think about, ‘Oh, I’ve got to grab and bag it, it’s got to get weighed.’ It should be grab-and-go.”

GLOBE TROTTERS

An advantage that Mastromauro sees for Sunset Foods on the flip side of the home-bound conditions associated with COVID-19, is that many of his customers are travelers. So, when they journey, they return home with a taste for new things. “They go on exotic vacations, and they see exotic fruit, or they see exotic vegetables. Then we’ve got to get them in,” he says.

Mastromauro says travel and away-from-home dining can generate specific demand, which may be behind shoppers paying more attention to broccolini. “That’s become a bigger thing here lately.”

“I’m trying to get the cost down so that we can promote it more often. It’s just those one-offs in each category that our customers see at a restaurant or see when they’re on vacation, and they want to see it.”

Of course, success requires work, and Sunset Foods stores are meticulously merchandised with evident product excellence and consistent maintenance of displays, ensuring the right produce at the right quality is enhanced, instead of wasted.

“With my guys, you see a lot of attention to detail,” says Mastromauro. “They’re very proud of what they do.”

Mastromauro says help in selling is always a plus, whether it is promotional displays that helped spur interest in Sumo oranges or packaging on cherries that helps spur sales in the California season and, following, the turn to the Pacific Northwest.

“In cherries and even grapes, the graphic bags, the graphics on the bags that tell a little bit of the story about the product, I think that’s added a lot,” he said. “I think a lot of the growers have become marketers or have hired marketers to tell the story on their packaging.”

The graphics and the information provided alongside “really resonates with the customer. I think that’s what has helped a lot of our categories grow, the story on the packages,” says Mastromauro.

FACT FILE

Sunset Foods
777 Central Ave., Suite Two, Highland Park, IL 60035
847-681-5518
www.sunsetfoods.com