As the UK’s largest retailer, Tesco offers its customers the full range of grapes year-round - white, red and black seedless grapes and seeded black and red grapes.
“All varieties are available for the majority of the year, but we do have a few gaps to fill on black seedless grapes,” says Ann Wells, senior buying manager.
Tesco sources grapes from a wide variety of countries in order to put superior quality grapes on its shelves every week, she adds.
“The main countries are South Africa, Chile, Greece and Spain. However, there are many others, which fulfil an important role at various times in the year,” says Wells.
In the UK, Tesco sold 110,000 tonnes of grapes in the last calendar year and volumes have grown consistently over the past few years. “We have carried out our normal activity, offering customers good quality at low prices. We introduced our “full and fresh” produce displays last year, which enabled us to improve grape availability for our customers across all areas.”
To satisfy the increasing demand from customers, Tesco has been consistent for several years in its grape preference - Thompson on white, and Crimson on red.
Wells adds: “However, we do continue to take many other varieties, when Thompson and Crimson are unavailable or do not meet the quality standards our customers expect. Tesco aims to sell the grape range our customers want to buy.”
To achieve this objective, Wells has increased the range over the last couple of years, on both loose and pre-packed grapes to meet the needs of Tesco’s broad customer base. Looking at the growth within the category in the next 12 months, Wells says Spanish-grown Crimson has not reached its full potential yet, and 2005 could be the year.
The in-store volumes of both organic and Fairtrade grapes have evolved in the past year. “Getting the right quality of organic grapes on the shelf remains a challenge,” says Wells, “but we have made good progress this year, and seen a significant increase in sales. We launched Fairtrade grapes for the first time in 2003, and initial sales were positive.
“In general, grapes tend to grow ahead of the rest of the fruit category, but there is a long way to go before the category catches up with the bananas and apples.”
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