Been There, Labeled That
Sharing Our Labeling Experience With You

By Margaret O’Leary

This was Weber’s first time attending and exhibiting United Fresh.

Our team appreciated the unique opportunity to not only share our produce packaging labels and printer solutions, but also attend Learning Center panel events to learn about the produce industry.

Weber’s Vertical Markets manager, Paul Johnson, attended several Learning Centers and sent me the highlights live from the show.

The Exploding Organic Category

Samantha Cabuluna of Earthbound Farm spoke of the rapid growth in acceptance of organic foods. She mentioned an Organic Trade Association study that found that over 50% of Americans bought more organic food last year than the year prior.  As Jason Hollinger of Four Seasons and Mark Carroll of Gelson’s Market put it, this has had a major impact on growers, wholesalers and retailers.

Growers are increasing in size with the swelling popularity of these foods, and have been able to find new markets with traditional retailers. In turn, retailers are becoming more successful as they begin to move organic foods from their own separate displays, to treating them as additional varieties in traditional displays.

How Consumer Packaging Can Invigorate Your Brand

Lynn Dornblaser of Mintel Group spoke about the many important factors that determine why people buy certain products. Those include: Health (personal and environmental), accessibility, and authenticity of claims.

Additionally, she told the group many ways successful brands are renewing interest in their brand and creating consumer awareness by making changes to their packaging

• “Bite-sizing”, creating smaller packaging so food can be eaten at nontraditional times
• Creating new products that create a different sensory experience. For example, a popular British soda that was sold temporarily in a foam formula
• Clear packaging to convey freshness
• Communicating values in a new way through graphics and print
• Reusable-repurposable packaging to keep the brand in front of the customer longer than just the initial use. The example she used was a Keystone Light beer carton with tear out hole that transforms the carton into a “bag toss” hole.

Produce Traceability Initiative

Dan Vache of the United Fresh Produce Association, Mike Augustini, Senior Produce Director at Walmart, and Doug Grant, Senior VP at Oppenheimer Group spoke of the challenges of getting the produce industry to comply with the voluntary Produce Traceability Initiative.

Even though the initiative was started in 2008, it is estimated that there is only 30-40% adoption by grower/shippers. That number is even smaller for retailers, who must find a way to capture the information being provided by grower/shippers.

In Search of Freshness

Harold Lloyd gave what was likely the most dynamic presentation of the show. As an experienced grocery and restaurant owner/manager, he offered tips on how to convey the idea of freshness in the store or produce department.

Dressed as Sherlock Holmes, Lloyd investigated good and bad ideas currently being practiced by independent and chain grocers alike. Important to him are landscaping, signage, menu rotation, endcap rotation and employee education.

He spoke at length about how packaging can communicate freshness and suggested that store management should regularly compare their packaging to that of their competitors.

From the Weber Booth

There were three topics that got the most buzz from our booth:

• Color Prime Labels – Mike Sirico shared our produce packaging label samples with United Fresh attendees at our booth. Our labels can be printed with flexographic presses, our HP Indigo digital label presses or the new QuadraColor inkjet label printer.

• Label Materials – In addition to sharing printing examples, the booth was also full of label samples printed on a variety of materials. One of the most popular materials for the produce industry is a clear label.  They compliment clear plastic clamshell packaging with a “no-label” look.

• Traceability labels – Mike Soloway demoed traceability label printing with the Zebra ZT230 printer. This process is made simple with Weber’s Legi software, which includes an easy GS1 Wizard to create bar codes on demand. Weber also carries materials that work on many containers, such as RPC’s and corrugated cartons.

Thanks to everyone who Tweeted with us during the show! We made so many wonderful connections on Twitter and Facebook from this show. If you’re interested in connecting with the produce industry, check out the Twitter United Fresh List @SiteLabbers put together.  Subscribe to their list for all the Tweets by those who participated and exhibited at United Fresh 2013.

Next up… the Dairy Deli Bake show June 2-4 in Orlando, FL.