Good afternoon,
What a ride, what a SWEET CHERRY ride it has been this season! Early on, we managed to dodge some of the heat ridden fruit in Southern California and proudly owned some of the best CHERRIES in the state. Then we bridged the gap early and jumped up to Washington and grabbed fruit from the cooler nothern part of the state. Now, we work with the grower who has the largest quantity of late season fruit, due to their high elevation orchards. Thanks to some favorable weather and working with the right growers, we are going to go ONE MORE WEEK and take this SWEETHEART cherry variety to the last dance of the summer! We will have limited quantities available for the final week of domestic cherries next week so get your orders in early - quality and sugar reports are set for a strong finish!
The starts and stops of the season up the east coast have begun to settle. We are now full go on SQUASH, PEPPER, EGGPLANT, and CUCUMBERS out of states like New York, Michigan, and Canada. GREEP PEPPER is where we have seen the biggest turnaround in quality, especially in the JUMBO sizing.
California GRAPES have had to brave temperatures over 100-degree Fahrenheit but despite that, production has started to improve. We are seeing better availability on RED, GREEN, and BLACK seedless grapes this week. Pricing is holding firm but there is lesser quality fruit for a bargain for the shippers looking to make that mistake. Quality is much improved over the fruit out of Mexico, but we may see the heat of this season have an impact later on in the season. California GLOBE GRAPES should be available the week of August 19th.
ORANGE supplies are TIGHT even though we are still about two months away from the start of new crop NAVELS. The HEAT is mostly to blame for this early shortage but we are also starting to see the back to school demand startup. Offshore fruit is currently an option but we will have to wait and see how far that takes us into the domestic valencia season. Markets are going to get strong and fruit will be very tight for the next month or two.
RUSSET POTATOES are about to transition up north to Washington. While FOB prices should remain mostly steady, FREIGHT cost will be about $1,500 higher than it was out of Idaho. That results in a price increase of about $1-$2 per case and $30 per bin. We have at least one more week of Idaho RUSSETS next week and from there we will most likely move north to the new crop.
More as it happens,
Parker Tannehill