Up Hill Battle

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

PMA, IFDA, and NRA deserve praise for daring to attempt a great thing that would do much good for the produce industry, for the foodservice industry and the health of hundreds of millions of people. One wonders, however, what it could possibly mean for foodservice operators to say that they “wished they had more fresh produce options” and that they “wished there was more information on how to incorporate fresh produce on their menu.”

Certainly, large vendors will do backflips to respond to information requests from companies like McDonald’s, so what kind of information could top experts on the buy side be lacking? And with the explosion of counter-seasonal imports and the growth of fresh-cuts, there are more options than ever before. So what options are they missing?

Perhaps this is just an expression of a wish list. Buyers would like to know where to buy locally grown muskmelons in Boston year-round, and a way to offer a mango steak that won’t leave customers asking: Where’s the beef? But this doesn’t seem like the way real-world business people address real-world business problems.

Sure, the production end of the business can always do better and offer more options and more information. Yet there is something about this kind of feedback that leaves this columnist wondering if buyers aren’t telling us what they think we want to hear or what they think they ought to say.

We suspect the truth is that though associations such as the National Restaurant Association and the International Foodservice Distributors Association can see a great strategic reason for restaurants to be considered as advocates for increasing fresh produce consumption — after all, that would align their industries with the angels, those looking to improve public health — actual menu decisions are not usually prompted by such concerns.

Oh sure, it may be true that McDonald’s keeps salad items on its menu, selling at a level that would be completely unacceptable for a hamburger, but McDonald’s is the poster child for bad health-promoting food and a giant global corporation very sensitive to political concerns.

Besides, although the goal may be to double fresh produce usage in foodservice, most would consider that goal a waste if it came about through a lot of produce being ordered by foodservice operators, even served, but not consumed. Anyone with small children, who have had the opportunity to spend time at the school cafeteria, sees this dynamic clearly. The school can prepare that succotash, it can even force every child to accept it on the plate, but, in the end, the school can’t force the children to eat it.

There are certain concepts, says Darden’s Season’s 52, where produce is crucial. For the most part, though, produce is caught in the middle. The protein is what causes the sale and what the consumer evaluates. The starch fills up both the plate and the stomach inexpensively. That leaves produce, in most mainstream concepts, as an accent, adding color and texture.

The key to increase produce consumption at foodservice is to change the nature of the entrée so that produce is the main event and the protein becomes the accent — a stir-fry is a perfect example.

Many consumers will find these types of produce-rich foods very satisfying — a stir fry, many salads with some protein accents, pita pockets filled with vegetables, etc. — and they are ideal for foodservice because many consumers would find gathering all the varieties of produce and all the chopping and dicing off-putting.

Far be it for us to argue that the industry shouldn’t help to “re-imagine the restaurant experience” or against “demonstrating social responsibility,” “collaborating with stakeholders” and the industry “telling its story,” but the typical restaurant out there puts things on its menu for more prosaic reasons — the items taste good and they sell.

Although associations — PMA in produce and NRA and IFDA on the foodservice operator and distributor side — have their own reasons for heralding initiatives and, of course, better information from operators only helps, our sense is we are really surveying the wrong people.

Doubling usage of fresh produce in a meaningful way means doubling consumption, so we better be talking to consumers about what holds them back from ordering and eating more fresh produce. We should be looking at consumer-friendly initiatives such as allowing consumers to get an old favorite dish if they try a new produce item and they don’t like it.

We also need to consider if we are really true to the story we tell. If we attract people to eating produce based on its health benefits and then slather the vegetables in a calorie-rich sauce or dressing, it is a kind of bait-and-switch.

There are lots of great foods focused on produce, but we should not underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead. All over the world, in widely varying cultures, as the people become more prosperous they eat a diet higher in calories and richer in meat. One suspects that this “westernized” diet must answer to very deep needs, both cultural and biological, to have such universal success.

Europe and Canada both have higher per-capita produce consumption than the United States, but if we wanted to list the cultures that have reduced protein consumption to consume more produce, we would have a short list indeed.