
Wild Harvest Organic Expansion
By Adam Calder
A recent article in The Packer by Jennifer Strailey details a new line of organic produce being offered through one of Wheatsfield’s distributors.
Wheatsfield Cooperative’s biggest grocery supplier is United Natural Foods Incorporated (UNFI). A couple years ago, UNFI bought Wheatsfield’s biggest produce supplier, Albert’s Fresh Produce. During the past few years, UNFI has introduced their own private label of organic produce: Wild Harvest.
Initially the program began with bananas, and has since expanded to include bagged apples, avocados, broccoli, cabbage, iceberg lettuce, limes, mangos, oranges, romaine lettuce, russet potatoes, sweet potatoes and tomatoes.
All Wild Harvest products are packaged with the same purple colored label to help customers easily identify the brand on the sales floor. Right now, Wheatsfield only regularly carries Wild Harvest bananas. We will increase our Wild Harvest offerings as they become available.
UNFI works directly with farms and farmers across North America to obtain produce for this program. The produce is packaged at the farm, which helps shorten the number of steps between the farm and the customer. This shortened supply chain results in lower costs, and those savings are passed on to our customers.
Demand for private label products, which are usually more affordable than large national brands, has only increased since the pandemic began. UNFI is capitalizing on its cache of consumer shopping data, continent-wide scale and supply chain network to increase their private label offerings and help our customers find great deals on high quality organic produce.
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