Kevin Moffitt with Pear Bureau Northwest recently spent some time talking about the challenges to marketing the northwest pear crop.
“The first issue is the fact that pears are just not on people’s list. Not everybody is buying pears. They’re an impulse item with just a small but solid core group that is buying most of the fruit sold,” said Moffitt.
In a list of top fruit items sold in the U.S. apples come in at the number one spot but pears don’t make the top 10 at number 11.
Less than 50% of consumers buy pears in any given year. In addition to that 35% of pear purchasers are buying 90% of the pears sold.
“Those that do buy pears they tend to buy only 7 times per year,” Moffitt added. “So while we’ll continue to nurture those heavy pear purchasers one key objective is to move those medium pear purchasers up slightly.”