Cultivating Kid Consumers

Summer fruits and veggies offer a hot opportunity for grocers to woo young customers.

- D. Gail Fleenor

Mention summer produce, and visions of sweet peach juice trickling down your chin, buttery corn on the cob, and redder-than-red strawberries come to mind. With these tasty options, summer is a wonderful time to cultivate the newest produce customers — in other words, kids.

These are the produce consumers of the future, and most of their parents are Millennials, the customers who want natural foods like produce. Grocers can do a lot to encourage parents to teach their children to eat more produce and less candy, until one day at the supermarket, Junior insists, “Mom, I want a peach!”

According to U.S. Census counts and projections, there are more than 74 million kids under age 18 in the United States. Children make up one-quarter of the population. Since most kids are out of school during summer, it’s a great time to give them a little attention in the produce department through activities such as sampling and handouts with games related to producing. Paying attention to these future customers also makes a positive impression on their parents, something online grocers and summer farmers’ markets can’t do.

In the Summertime

Summer is the time for picnics, cookouts and natural snacks in abundance, such as cherries and peaches, to name just two. Many summer veggies are also at their best and sweetest, such as corn. Various supermarkets allow customers to shuck ears of sweet corn in the produce department. Refreshing melons highlight a still-warm summer evening, and flavorful berries can dot cakes. It’s a time that reminds some of the childhood eats — for instance, most of us remember the first time we tasted a nectarine or ate buttered corn on the cob — and introduces little ones to the season’s bounty.