how to get permaculture apples into safeway?

I had a cousin who worked produce at Albertsons. I asked him how he picks what he gets. He told me the distributor gets the food and they can pick from there but they have to get from that distributor. Now, they do want to be able to do local produce but you'd have to be able to meet the companies high demands for said produce and get in good with the distributor first.

I have sold considerable quantities of apples and other fruit, mostly in farmers markets.

This does not address the "how to get apples into Safeway" question but might be pertinent for some folks.

I was managing and selling from orchards at times (I either worked on the ranch or had leased the orchard), but also sold a lot of fruit which I acquired free for the picking!

Many people have fruit and nut trees on their property which they do not care for nor harvest but incidentally. Usually they were very amenable to my removing the fruit "to avoid the mess it makes", especially when I would include as part of the deal a return when the trees are dormant to prune them.

Having been neglected, the trees had not been sprayed. This was in California and New Mexico, so much of this unsprayed and untended fruit was still cosmetically acceptable to consumers (which would likely not be the case in the East).

As a small producer with many crops, and therefore not a lot of any one item, I could not provide the quantity of anything as desired by stores such as Safeway or Whole Foods, but the local small grocery stores were very amenable. And helping them compete with the big chains by providing them with organic and healthy produce was something I liked.

When I had a lot of fruit, as was the case with the orchard in New Mexico, I would sell much of it as is, in the farmers markets, but also processed a lot of it into purée. That sold like hotcakes. If you're able to arrange for the use of a commercial kitchen, you can increase the value of the apple (etc.) crop by canning it. The resulting product sells well to small shops and organic food stores as well as farmers markets.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Bryant, you might have noticed one of my obsessions is closed-loop permaculture systems.  Do you intend to keep your pork loop closed or mostly closed?  Is there some surplus from one of your clients that you might be able to use to close the loop with the pork you're removing from your system?  Restaurant food waste, perhaps?  This is the major failing I see in schemes to market permaculture products - the permaculture system is losing surplus which should be returned to the system.  If one is marketing, ideally there would be an input from the client - not from the feed store! In my opinion.

The way I see it, the surplus is being converted into cash, and the surplus cash can be used to fund projects.

I found this a fascinating read. I'm reminded of Mulberries. They're sold in markets all over the world, where they can be harvested, transported to market, sold, and consumed all in one day. Mulberries do not work so well if you ask them to meet the needs of a grocery store because they cannot handle the shipment and storage and handling needs of a grocery store and remain economically viable.

In fact, to sell apples in a grocery store and remain economically viable, some of the money pays for refrigerated shipping, wax application, research, production, and application of preservatives, shipping loss, the companies and staff that manage every step between the tree and your grocery bag. When you finally buy and eat the apple from the grocery store, a lot of the money you spent goes to support the grocery store model, and very little goes to support the cultivation and harvesting of the apple.

This really puts apples at a crippling disadvantage at a grocery store when competing against the goods that have an easier time meeting the needs of the grocery store model. Wheat and corn-based foods dominate our shelves because they are relatively easy to handle in bulk compared to mulberries. You can't ask people to buy a lot of mulberries if they do not know  how to fit them into their household.

As a result, people wind up with a distorted view of what should make up the foods of their plate as they walk down the aisles of a grocery store. I keep thinking about Paul's point in the original post about folks who just don't eat apples, not because they're unpleasant or unavailable or expensive, but because it doesn't fit their perception of their food. The vision of growing a permaculture garden and making all the right decisions and sustainably feeding your community falls apart in my head unless there is a radical change in the way these people shop for food. And they will continue shopping this way for food as long as that is the easiest way to shop, by convenience, expense, and habit.

Alan Burnett wrote:IAs a result, people wind up with a distorted view of what should make up the foods of their plate as they walk down the aisles of a grocery store. I keep thinking about Paul's point in the original post about folks who just don't eat apples, not because they're unpleasant  

Waxed apples would probably turn off a lot of folks, especially the permaculture kind.