Q: What is the mission and vision of Wish Farms?

Our company mission is to provide the best-tasting berries. Everything we do focuses on flavor and looking for opportunities to grow the varieties that our consumers are demanding. Wish Farms is a third-generation, family-owned and operated company. Now we also have the fourth generation involved in the company.

We're a year-round supplier and grower-shipper of all four major berries: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. We're based in Florida but have farming operations and grower partners all over the United States, Canada, and South America. We also grow and market pineberries, our fifth berry, which is a blush pink, white berry that we introduced in 2021.

Q: How important is data in your operations?

We've come a long way over the years. If you'd asked this question a few years ago, we would have had a very different answer. The importance of data in agriculture has evolved, and we've realized how crucial it is to track and merge data from different departments to create a strategy.

We use data for everything from quality control and traceability to making informed sales decisions. We merge sales data, purchasing data, and even outside retailer data to follow trends and predict upcoming crop yields. By using historical data combined with weather and industry data, we can make strategic decisions, like pricing and crop forecasting.

On the marketing side, we're tracking all different types of analytics to measure our KPIs and how we're doing as a consumer brand. That is mostly done digitally through social, website analytics, Google Analytics, etc. Internally, we're working on creating a robust data warehouse. We have all these data points, but we need to centralize them to create automated reports. This will help us make better decisions faster and be more efficient.

Q: What problems do you face in growing blueberries?

There’s no shortage of challenges, that’s for sure! Labor is always a significant issue, as well as climate change and ensuring we grow varieties that taste good, ship well, and maintain the integrity of the fruit. Pest and disease control is another big challenge, varying from region to region, with issues like birds or specific diseases that are hard to manage.

Another big challenge, but also an opportunity, is sustainable packaging. We’re feeling pressure from retailers to reduce plastic use and increase recyclability. We’re exploring various options and working with suppliers, but there’s no perfect solution yet. Consumers want less plastic, but they also want to see the product and have it remain high quality. Packaging innovations need to maintain the fruit’s integrity, and we don’t want to compromise on that, especially when people are paying a premium for blueberries. It’s a difficult balance, and there are lots of ideas out there, but scaling them up remains a challenge.

Q: How do you boost local demand for blueberries?

We do a lot of consumer education around the health benefits of blueberries, which have been heavily researched. But health alone isn’t enough to drive demand. We work with influencers to create new ideas and recipes, using social media and digital platforms to engage people. Marketing dollars have to be spent wisely because, as a commodity, we don’t have the kind of budget that bigger products do. We have to be strategic and stretch every dollar.

Q: What are you most excited about for the future of blueberries?

We're thrilled about the new varieties coming out of partnerships with breeders and research institutions like the University of Florida. The goal is to find the best-tasting, most consistent berries to increase demand. If we can provide flavorful, good-looking blueberries with great texture, people will keep coming back for more. We’re working on varieties that should come to fruition in the next one to three years, and that’s very exciting!