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Ataulfo

Farm, Featured, News

Blooming In the Southern Mango Orchards

November 23, 2021

Ataulfo orchards bloom and we untwist season start intel

This week I have been fielding a lot of questions about when the Mexican mangoes will start up again. It’s common for me to get these emails and calls this time of year. People get confused and excited. I think as it gets colder everywhere we all want the Mexican mango season to happen sooner, after all it signals warmer weather here.

The bad news is we are still a few months away so wait we must.  The good news is the weather thus far has been great, lots of water filling the orchards and water tables. It’s way too early for us to release much of any serious information, or actual crop reports.  Year after year, after year the weather in January dictates everything for the start. Climate change in particular makes gauging start times tough, especially the beginning of a season/region.

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Farm, Featured, News

Late Season Brooks Mangoes!

August 30, 2021

Empaque Don Jorge expands the season with late varietal trials

There are always “good” and “bad” parts to any growing season. If you ask most growers (including the Crespo’s) “was this a good season or a bad one?”, most will say that it was not a great one. The entire season was ripe with problems, mostly the kind that cost more money and bring in less.

Mango farmers had to work twice as hard for a lot less money this season overall. The drought caused significant problems on the growing side and customers, especially wholesalers and distributors struggled with labor and logistics issues, making the distribution process often hellish and any normal quality defect, even slight cosmetic ones, impossible to maneuver through.

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Culture, Featured, News, Secrets & Lies

Los Mochis Transition in Motion

August 16, 2021

McAllen enjoys the last fruits of our labor while Nogales embraces a bit more propaganda

Here is the brief take-away from this article: Hot water baths are not bad, and untreated fruit is not better. The end of the season is complex for all- let facts be your guide.

For a handful of us who grow extensively in the El Rosario area during the Sinaloa season, mango supplies can often be extended all the way into the first week of September. While other broker-sellers move to the untreated Mochis zone (which jump up significantly in price and size), we can stay longer in lower prices and smaller fruit. Naturally, this benefits our volume-driven sellers a great deal, knowing most customers have a price point they must adhere to in order to capture sales. In some regions, consumers will only pay so much for a mango; this is particularly true in the Midwest and on the east coast. So, just a touch below the arbitrary untreated zone line, the Rosario region offers a micro growing region where we can do just that – provide smaller, cheaper mangoes throughout the entire month of August.

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Farm, Featured, Secrets & Lies

#OrchardReport

July 13, 2021

The yin and yang of seasonal rains, an abundance of complexities

 

Someone asked me recently why I haven’t posted anything under my Secrets & Lies category for a while. Most of the truth of my answer was I forgot about it. But buried in that answer is also, I (like everyone) sometimes don’t like to talk about the truth because its complex and I fear people won’t understand, will take it the wrong way or use it against me. When you also speak on behalf of a brand or a big mango system, it can be frightening to put out hard truths.

The lack of communicating existing or potential quality problems is one of the biggest industry secrets and lies there is, as if burying these truths helps anyone. So here I am being the risktaker/bettermaker that I am. Here to not alarm us, but put us into a proactive stance, where information is the key to the successful remainder of the Mexican mango season.

We have been in the midst of a serious drought that has brought a multitude of complexities to the entire Mexican mango season thus far. Those complexities seem likely to continue as seasonal rains have started, pounding the current Sinaloa growing sub regions (around El Rosario and Esquinapa) with lots of water over the last few weeks.

While it’s true that any amount of rain always brings some drought relief, it can also bring with other problems, especially when the pendulum swings to totally to the other side as it has going from no rain to lots at once.

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Featured, News

How to Display #MuchosMangoes

June 30, 2021

Advice and visuals from our favorite Summer Mango Mania partners

As we head deeper into summertime and peak Mexican mango season, the nation is ample with #MuchosMangoes.   We’ve made certain that in all our key cities and regions throughout the nation (& Canada)  fruit is arriving with exceptional color, taste and quality and consumer price points are exceptionally low.

We have also affirmed that most displays are brimming with Crespo Organic recipe cards, posters and banners. Each year the growing excitement over mangoes continues and retailers, small and large, all over the country, continue to build bigger, bolder organic mango displays priced perfectly for consumers. All of us working together for the common goal of selling a lot of mangoes…… spreading #MangoJoy!

Consumer engagement in learning to choose, store, cut and use mangoes has been at an all-time high and we take the job of equipping consumers with useful mango education seriously.  Our prowess to enlighten consumers with multiple in-store and digital platforms, as well as through live demos, FREE- Online cooking classes and even classes for the little Crespo niños offers something for everyone. (See the full calendar here.)

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Culture, Farm, Featured, Kitchen, News, People

Boots On The Ground (Flipflops Technically)

June 8, 2021

Under the Crespo mango trees, I find efficiency, ingenuity, mango joy and #muchosmangoes

 The “Propaganda Lady” is what they called me last week at Empaque Don Jorge, as I walked around with my mask and hairnet snapping photos and filming staged and impromptu videos. I’ve learned to see the big smiles in the eyes of so many masked strangers. The extreme warmth of the packing house was more than the intense Sinaloa summer heat. It was, as I say in much of my “propaganda,” #PuroMexico #PuroAlegria! A warmth like no other. I loved every moment of my time there.

Propaganda is Spanish for marketing, and it makes me giggle, and reminds me of the simplicity and clarity that most other languages employ. English on the other hand seems sneakier, using multiple words to describe the same thing, but choosing one or the other depending on what is to be propagandized.  In Spanish, propaganda simply suggests that whatever the messaging is, it often has another purpose – in this case, to educate customers about our mango production process and about mangoes generally

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Farm, Featured, News

The Little Fruit Season

June 8, 2021

A real time peak into the Mexican mango orchards

Back in April, right before the transition from the southern regions to the northern regions, we reported about the little Ataulfo mangoes and the drought that was causing them. We further reported that the transition north would result in similar sizing on not just Ataulfos but the round mangoes as well and that the same drought, is running up the continent.

Eventually the rest of the industry followed our lead and  starting talking and reporting about the northern regions alarming predictions for small fruit. Here we are now a few weeks into the Nayarit season and we still encounter disbelievers, folks that want to order 6 and 7cnts and are not willing to budge.

Trust us, trust the others, the fruit is small. In Nayarit and Sinaloa.

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Farm, Featured, News

Smooth Transition North

May 11, 2021

Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Nayarit line up for consistency in supply

By nature, transitions can be tricky. Shifting from the southern regions to the northern regions is typically unpredictable and complex. This year, it is proving to be exactly that.

The southern regions have produced a good amount of fruit, mostly on the smaller side and mostly because people like us (Crespo) have strategically increased our orchards there, in order to gain greater volume earlier, capture a bigger percentage of market share immediately, and jumpstart consumer demand sooner. There have been complexities as usual but we maneuver through them fairly well, mostly because of the direct-trade relationships we have with our customers, and the communication and exchange of information on the challenges and opportunities in advance allowing us to together, strategize, knowing each customer and region has different needs.

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Featured, News, People

Cinco De Mayo Mango Merchandising

April 20, 2021

An Interview with Brian Dey
Senior Merchandiser & Natural Stores Coordinator, Four Seasons Produce, Inc.

While it’s true that Cinco De Mayo is less a real holiday in Mexico and more a symbolic celebratory event for Americans, there is a significant rich history behind the day and how it has come to honor the Mexican culture, people and food. As our Cinco de Mayo campaign #CelebrateMexico #CelebrateMangoes nears its peak celebratory days, we thought we’d ask one of our industry’s best produce merchandisers, Brian Dey, for thoughts and advice for this retail extravaganza.

Dey is the Senior Merchandiser and Natural Stores Coordinator for Four Seasons Produce in Ephrata, PA. He has been involved on the retail level of produce for over 33 years and has been with Four Seasons for over 22 years. He has logged substantial hours in almost every position in the produce department—from produce clerk to produce manager. With Four Seasons, he has worked a variety of merchandising positions including Produce Coordinator and Produce Merchandiser. Now, as Senior Merchandiser, he credits his success to an “extreme passion for produce and achieving excellence in growing relations and building sales with a subnational focus on in-store training.” His experience at the store level, in multiple and diverse venues, provides him with the insight and relationship skills needed to create in-store success for the multiple products that Four Seasons Produce provides to its customers.

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Featured, News, People

Others YoYo – Crespo Stabilizes

February 18, 2021

 

Our Direct Trade mango program gets you out of the cold!

This mango season has been an odd one so far, no doubt about it.  Not only did it start much earlier than average but volume output jumped up considerably faster than usual. Peru and Mexico are overlapping longer this season and in high volumes. It also looks like we are in for a longer and colder winter, which complicates presenting consumers with the amazing quality hailing from the Mexican orchards these days. All of these things make for a complex start of the season, which means we all need to be good partners for optimal success. That’s where we shine!

The Crespo Organic Direct Trade Program is exactly the kind of program needed for this partnership success; regardless if you are a retailer, wholesaler, distributor, home delivery agent or processor.  We are practicing what we preach currently and working diligently with our customers to achieve fair and stable pricing for all, while delivering the high quality mangoes Mexico is producing and consumers crave.

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