Produce is a very sophisticated category today. Quality, freshness, price and shrink still matter enormously – and always will. But in 2026, they’re only part of the equation.
Brands, private label, consumer marketing, promotional funding, packaging, proprietary varieties and convenience are nowadays bigger parts of the business. That puts produce executives in territory that looks familiar to anyone who has spent time managing CPG categories.
Fresh-cut produce is a great example. Salad kits, packaged salads, cut fruit, vegetable trays and other ready-to-eat products create value beyond the commodity itself. The consumer is paying for convenience, consistency and reduced preparation time.
That changes how the product can be marketed and how the category can be managed.
A head of lettuce remains highly price-sensitive. A salad kit can offer a differentiated recipe, package size, flavor profile and brand proposition. Companies including Dole, Taylor Farms, Earthbound Farm, Ready Pac and Organicgirl have demonstrated that consumers will pay for those differences when the product delivers.
Dole and Taylor Farms in particular show how far that model can go. These are recognizable brands competing on much more than the underlying lettuce. They can introduce new varieties and flavor combinations, develop different package formats, support products with consumer marketing and promotions, and give retailers another reason to merchandise beyond price.
Convenience also changes the competitive set. A salad kit can be a dinner solution. Cut fruit can be a snack. A vegetable tray can compete for an entertaining occasion. These products may live in produce, but they can capture spending that otherwise could have gone somewhere else in the store.
That makes convenience valuable to both the supplier and the retailer. It creates differentiation for the brand while giving the category manager another way to generate incremental sales.
And the same principles are spreading well beyond salads.
Greenhouse Tomatoes Show Consistency Creates Brand Value
Greenhouse tomatoes are a good example of where this is heading.
These days, tomatoes can be differentiated by variety, flavor, growing method, package and brand. NatureSweet, Village Farms, Houweling’s, Sunset and Mucci Farms have all established identities within a category that could otherwise be merchandised primarily around size, appearance and price.
Those brands matter because greenhouse production provides something particularly valuable: greater consistency – consistency anyone would be proud to put their brand on.
Inconsistency has been and remains one of the persistent problems in fresh produce. Consumers will certainly remember a tomato that tasted great, but they also remember the one that disappointed them. A brand that can reduce that variability has something meaningful to sell.
The greenhouse brands have also done a good job of moving the conversation beyond simply “tomatoes.” Beefsteak, Campari, cocktail, Roma, grape and specialty tomatoes create opportunities to merchandise around flavor, usage and eating experience. Packaging gives suppliers room to communicate those differences and build recognition around them.
I also think the industry sometimes undersells greenhouse production itself. “Greenhouse grown” or “hothouse grown” doesn’t necessarily need to dominate the package, but it can reinforce the quality proposition. Many consumers today understand controlled growing environments, so there’s value in communicating how the product was produced.
For the retailer, branded greenhouse produce also creates a strong private-label opportunity. A retailer with a trusted fresh reputation can put its own name behind a consistent product and potentially capture more of the margin and consumer loyalty.
That is straight out of the CPG playbook.
A Produce Brand Becomes a Customer Promise
Of course, slapping a logo on a clamshell doesn’t make for a meaningful brand. A successful produce brand has to reduce uncertainty for the consumer. The product should taste good, be properly ripened, deliver consistent flavor and do all of that with a reasonable shelf life.
Driscoll’s understood this early.
When I worked at a produce distributor, buyers didn’t necessarily treat Driscoll’s strawberries as interchangeable with every other strawberry. We had a “strawberry price,” and we had a “Driscoll’s price.”
In other words, the brand had established enough of a quality reputation to become part of the purchasing decision. That’s what produce companies trying to build brands should be attempting to achieve. Recognition is useful; trust is much more valuable.
Fruitist, formerly Agrovision, is pursuing that strategy aggressively in berries. Its jumbo blueberries are positioned around a better and more consistent eating experience, supported by consumer advertising, celebrity marketing and sports sponsorships.
That level of consumer marketing remains unusual in produce, but it makes good sense for the category.
Berries are highly snackable, health-oriented and easy to package and brand. Quality can also vary substantially. The reality is consumers opening a package of blueberries don’t always know whether they’re getting large, sweet, firm fruit… or something disappointing.
A supplier that can reliably deliver the better experience has the better basis for a premium brand.
Private Label Belongs In the Same Conversation
Retailers should view the growth of produce brands as an assortment and category-management opportunity. A strong supplier brand can bring consumer recognition, innovation and marketing support. It can help establish a premium tier and potentially grow the category.
Private label can accomplish something different.
Retailers with strong fresh reputations can use private label to establish their own quality proposition, manage price gaps and improve margin. Greenhouse tomatoes, packaged salads and other value-added produce categories are particularly well suited to that approach.
The objective should not automatically be to replace the branded supplier. In many cases, the strongest assortment may include both.
That gives the category manager multiple price points and propositions while allowing the retailer to benefit from the marketing investment being made by major produce brands.
This is also where brokers and suppliers have to bring more to the table.
A branded produce presentation should ideally look like a serious CPG presentation. Retailers need sales performance, category growth, promotional strategy, consumer insights, distribution capabilities and a clear explanation of what the item adds to the assortment.
That marketing investment matters. If Dole, Taylor Farms, Driscoll’s, Fruitist, NatureSweet or another supplier is spending money to create consumer recognition and demand, that belongs in the category conversation. So does the supplier’s ability to support promotions, introduce innovation and help the retailer grow the total business rather than simply shift volume among similar items.
Shelf and refrigerated space are far too valuable to support duplication simply because another supplier has a package to sell.
Produce Executives Are Becoming Category Managers
None of this is to say that the traditional produce disciplines are anything less than essential. A retailer that can’t execute freshness, rotation, quality control and shrink management will not solve those problems with better branding.
But those skills now sit alongside a broader set of category-management responsibilities.
Executives have to understand which brands generate incremental sales, which suppliers are investing behind their products, which premium items can sustain their price points and where private label can compete effectively.
They also have to be able to distinguish genuine innovation from mere assortment proliferation.
That’s especially important as suppliers introduce proprietary varieties, package sizes, flavor profiles and premium tiers. Every additional SKU competes for limited display space and creates another inventory and shrink consideration.
The standard must be incremental value.
Produce still has an advantage that most center-store categories would love to have. It communicates freshness, health and quality immediately to a shopper entering the department. Branding should reinforce those attributes rather than clutter them.
The strongest suppliers are going to understand that. They’re using branding to create confidence in products where eating quality can vary and to create additional value through convenience, consistency or differentiation.
The strongest retailers can use those brands alongside disciplined private-label programs to create better assortments, stronger price architecture and healthier margins.
Produce is still produce. Freshness and execution remain the foundation.
But the commercial disciplines surrounding it increasingly belong to the CPG world. The retailers, suppliers and brokers that understand both sides of that business will be in the strongest position to capture the value being created in the department.