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FORT WAYNE – Farmers markets have been popping up in Fort Wayne like weeds in an onion patch.
Shoppers want to buy the freshest foods and increasingly want to spend less energy bringing them to the table. But farmers markets aren’t the only source for local produce.
National and regional grocery chains want to ring up their share of sales, too.
Meijer announced in late July plans to buy more produce from Midwest growers, pumping more than $50 million into the economies of Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky.
The Grand Rapids, Mich.-based regional grocery chain said it buys about 30 percent of its fruit and vegetables from producers in the areas its 189 superstores serve.
But don’t mistake Meijer’s competitors for latecomers to the trend, the companies say. Their challenge is to increase the visibility of the locally grown produce already displayed beside dozens of other items on their shelves.
If Sharon Bair is any indication, the groceries have to up their marketing games.
The 53-year-old Wabash woman was wandering among the stalls at Jefferson Pointe’s farmers market. It’s the only way Bair knows to buy locally grown produce.
“I guess I haven’t seen it” advertised for sale in grocery stores, she said.
Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. has bought and sold locally grown produce since the grocery was founded 126 years ago, said Shawn Spencer, Kroger’s Central Division produce and floral merchandiser.
Local Walmart stores have been buying melons from John Hilger since the mid-1990s, when the local farmer approached district manager John Wolf about selling cantaloupe that would otherwise be left to rot in the fields. The idea was more groundbreaking than it seems. This was before Wal-Mart Stores Inc. starting building supercenters that sell groceries in the northeast Indiana market.
But Wolf agreed, and the melons were a hit with customers.
That success launched a long-term business relationship that today has Hilger selling corn to Wal-Mart. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer also buys pumpkins from Archer Farms in Kendallville and apples from Sunrise Orchards in Goshen.
Meijer buys more than 75 types of fruits and vegetables grown by more than 65 Midwest producers. None of those suppliers is in northeast Indiana, based on a list provided by a company spokesman.
Local growers have found an eager market in local grocers. Graber Farms, a certified organic operation owned by Joseph Graber, sells to Three Rivers Co-op and the Health Food Shoppe on North Anthony. The grower previously sold vegetables to Fresh Market.
Hilger sells corn and cucumbers to Kroger, which stocks the vegetables in local Kroger and Scott’s Food & Pharmacy stores.
The company’s northeast Indiana stores sell corn, melons, pumpkins and tomatoes grown in southern Indiana.
“There’s a customer demand for it,” Spencer said.
Even though demand has grown with the increased awareness of the food-miles concept, Kroger started buying more local and regional fruits and vegetables to cut costs when diesel prices started skyrocketing a couple of years ago, spokesman John Elliott said.
The company also consolidated some shipments to stores and starting creating delivery routes that rely on right turns, he said.
Transportation costs add up fast. In some cases, Kroger pays more to ship items from out of the country than it spends on the items themselves, Spencer said. Retailers, in turn, set produce prices higher to offset higher costs.
Although saving on shipping helps the bottom line, the grocery chain wouldn’t buy produce from local suppliers if shoppers preferred something else, Elliott said. It’s not a matter of saving time or money by dealing with local producers instead of grocery wholesalers, he said. Prices and convenience vary according to individual situations and aren’t a consistent deciding factor in where the company buys its thousands of items.
Still, Spencer makes it a priority to keep that local supply chain healthy. Kroger pays local producers faster because they usually have more cash flow issues, he said. And the grocer is committed to paying fair rates.
“We want local growers to stay in business, so we don’t push them to cut their costs and sell things below their cost,” he said.
A major competitor has a reputation for pinching pennies, but its district manager says the impression isn’t accurate.
Walmart’s Wolf said the retailer’s suppliers are paid weekly, as soon as bills are received. He’s had no complaints that bills aren’t paid promptly or vendors aren’t paid enough.
“I think we’re fair to everybody,” he said. “We negotiate price with every vendor. We do negotiate the best price we can. But we’re fair to our vendors.”
Each of the interviewed groceries posts signs to label locally grown produce. They also follow a relatively new guideline that requires country-of-origin stickers on fruits and vegetables.
Despite all the talk about the virtues of local food, Kroger’s Elliott sees value in buying produce from other states and countries as well. If the stores carried produce only when it’s being grown locally, the amount of time shoppers could find items each year would be very short, he said.
Eating grapes from California or Chile doesn’t take sales away from local growers, Elliott said. During the months when out-of-state and international produce is sold in the stores, those same items aren’t being grown locally.
“During the time we can source locally,” he said, “we do.”
