Make Your Easter Egg-ceptional This Year What does spring mean to you? To many of us, spring means orchards beginning to blossom, Easter celebrations, warm days that allow for time outside and most importantly, time spent with the ones we love.   Here are a few of our favorite recipes, hands on activities and crafts to boost your spirits and help remind us that blessings abound even in times of uncertainty. From our extended Chelan Fresh family to yours - Happy Easter!  ??? Download Your Free Easter Activity E-Book Tim’s Corner From the Sales Floor As we move into [...]

Spring Spring is just around the corner and in these uncertain times it brings signs of hope and an end to the cold days of winter. If you live anywhere in the upper half of the United States you are cautiously optimistic that warm spring days will come sooner rather than later. While our society worldwide continues to be challenged, changed, and stretched daily, Mother Nature does not stop. Longer, warmer days mean that trees are waking up from their winter dormancy and starting to show buds. Full bloom in mid-April for pears, cherries and other stonefruit trees are followed [...]

Rockit™ and KORU® - The Perfect Addition to Your Bottom Line The warm days of spring are just around the corner and if you noticed that it is time to start adding some dollars to your bottom line in the Produce department, think Rockit™ and KORU®. These NEW varieties will have steady supply through the spring and summer allowing for a constant product offering at store level. Tim Evans, Chelan Fresh Sales Director reports “Both the Rockit™ and the KORU® are proving to be on the higher end of retailer price points with high velocity sell through. The Rockit™ 3lb tub [...]

Late Season Cherry Availability Still Strong August is here, but the northern district of Central Washington Cherry Season continues to produce a very good volume of high-quality cherries. Tim Evans, Sales Director at Chelan Fresh remarked “the cherries that are coming off the tree now eat as well as we can remember and are definitely larger than normal.” These cherries are not just large, but really a jumbo size with the majority of the crop peaking on a 9 row cherry and larger. The Chelan Fresh growers are continuing to produce consistent daily volume for the next 10 days. According to [...]

Mid-Season Cherry Forecast As mid-July approaches, Chelan Fresh is at the peak of our cherry harvest. With some of our largest producing orchards situated in the northern part of Central Washington and at higher elevations, our cherry orchards hit their peak both in both volume and fruit size. According to Sales Manager Tim Evans, “We continue to pick some of the best eating, and larger than normal cherries as we move into mid-July. Our fruit continues to peak on 9.5 row and larger and the summer weather to date has been slightly cooler, creating one of the best eating cherry crops in recent memory. US [...]

The Best is Yet to Come! The 2019 cherry season continues to create excitement and opportunities for promotion of Washington Sweet and Rainier cherries. According to Marketing Director Mac Riggan, “While August will provide some smaller promotable volumes of Dark Sweet cherries, retailers would be well advised to focus their largest promotional activity on July volumes to capture dollars lost on the short  California crop and the now compressing Washington crop.”  “Club varieties like Orondo Ruby® and the Wild Sweet cherry are only available in late June through early July so capture the additional ‘wow!’ factor while these unique, but limited volume cherries last.” “Post 4th of July ad promotion will [...]

Quick Start to Washington Cherry Season And so it begins, the long anticipated start to the 2019 Chelan Fresh cherry season. This year the cherry season will begin quickly and continue with strong availability throughout late June into early August. Tim Evans, Sales Director for Chelan Fresh, states, “We are excited about the size and quality of our crop this year. We feel retailers and consumers alike will appreciate the good color, larger size and firm profile of our Chelan Fresh cherries. Red cherries and Rainier cherries will hit peak supply in time for large July 4th retail displays.” Evans also adds “Our projected [...]

Cherry season around the corner! Washington cherry season is less than 30 days away, and here at Chelan Fresh we’re excited to show off our complete line-up of new Chelan Fresh branded conventional and Cascade Crest Organics® branded cherry packaging. Launched at the end of 2018, our new packaging gives consumers a good view of the fruit through a clear window that is the shape of a cherry with a leaf. Marketing Director Mac Riggan states “From a distance the premium look of this packaging leaves no doubt for consumers that cherries have landed on the shelves of their favorite retailer”. With a white background and a distinctive red color lettering for Dark Sweet cherries and a playful orange color for Rainier cherries, consumers have the [...]

Escape Ordinary!® The KORU® apple is just hitting its stride this spring as the favorite late season apple. KORU® has an excellent flavor profile with hints of vanilla, a crisp texture, beautiful color for displays at the store level and best of all - extended shelf life in both stores and at home for consumers. According to Chelan Fresh Senior Director Denny Annen, “the KORU® is now available year-round with strong domestic production and imports arriving from New Zealand in late May. Because KORU® keeps so well, late spring and early summer is the perfect time to highlight KORU® in stores [...]

Honeycrisp and Granny Smith Available While much of the apple industry is starting to feel the tightening of a short crop year, Chelan Fresh is looking forward with anticipation. With their strong forecasting program and key Category Management, Chelan Fresh plans to have mainstay varieties like Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples available throughout the summer months. According to Sales Director Tim Evans, “When you are one of the top producers of Honeycrisp and Granny Smith apples from Washington State, you plan from the start to supply a steady stream of these varieties for top customers and new accounts. We are thrilled [...]