The Pear Bureau Northwest in the U.S. is hoping to better educate retailers and heighten awareness about the fruit this season through an online interactive training program. 

The organization spent 1.5 years working on the initiatve, which lead regional marketing manager Bob Koehler said was largely a response to retailers saying they had less knowledgeable staff, and limited time or money for their workers to attend educational seminars.

"The reason we went with a website program is that we do have a great manual, but when you give it to somebody in the department and expect them to read it or even go over parts of it, that's just not the nature of today's world – everybody goes online," Koehler told www.freshfruitportal.com.

He also said it was important for the program to be interactive, so as to provide more information than a typical Powerpoint presentation.

"It was made to be fast; it was made to hit the most important points as far as from telling them where the pears started, to handling, merchandising, rotation, and of course nutrition," Koehler said.

"The first question people ask is 'how do you tell when a pear is ripe and what is the nutritional value?' So even if someone reads it and picks up one or two items, we're better off than we were before."

"I think we try to hit pretty much all the components. The handling and getting ripe pears into the consumers' hands are probably two of the most important attributes, and it's all done at the store level."

Koehler explained sampling was one of the best tools used to check the ripeness, but it was still not as efficient as sampling other fruits like apples.

"Apples are supposed to be hard and crunchy, so it works really easily when you sample an apple, but getting the stores to realize they have to ripen the pears can be harder," he said.

"And displaying the pears as well - we tell them there's climacteric fruit and there's non-climacteric fruit. We tell them, 'do you put your avocados and your mangoes on refrigeration? No - well then you shouldn't put your pears on refrigeration'.

The Pear Bureau Northwest is also offering certificates and gift cards to retail staff to incentivize taking the online course.

Koehler said while the ultimate aim of the program was to create education and better awareness, it would hopefully translate into increased sales for the retailers.

"If they've got a fruit and pears in a better location - because a lot of pears are sold by impulse - and if they have riper fruit and store personnel can answer consumers' questions or they can check it as they're putting it out, that also means a better piece of fruit for the customer to buy," he said.

Apple marketers going gung-ho

With regard to this current season, Koehler said so far everything had been going well with a good-sized crop but the huge apple volumes in the U.S. meant there would be stiff market competition.

"We have a little bit smaller crop than last season because last year we had a record crop, but it's spread out amongst the varieties," he said.

"There's still a couple of varieties this year that may equal last year's numbers, so it's probably going to be our third fourth largest crop. Things are moving good," he said.

"Of course there's a whole bunch of apples out there, and prices are pretty attractive on apples this year. So not only pears, but I'm sure other commodities are going into retailers fighting to keep their presence in ads and in displays and everything else because the apple people are going gung-ho."

Around 30% of pears represented by the Pear Bureau Northwest are exported from the U.S. and Canada.

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