Stone Fruit Retail Quality Education Program FY25 R&D (SF24001)
Summary:
This project established a continuous quality and education initiative for retail staff, to boost sales of Australian stone fruit and enhancing consumer satisfaction.
The program aimed to have:
- Consistently good quality fruit on display;
- An abundance of fruit available for purchase;
- Reduction of key identified quality issues; and
- Completion of the retail survey capturing information on the
- Store displays
- Quality of the fruit
- Staff storage and display practices
- Shopper knowledge and purchase habits
Merchandisers were deployed into 791 Woolworths stores, multiple times (4-5 times per store), to conduct short surveys with retail staff, undertake audits of stonefruit fixtures and storage, and relay ‘best practice’ to retail staff. The merchandisers also deployed point of sale (POS) in each of the stores’ storage (back of house/BOH). Store visits occurred in two bursts – one at the start of the season in November to early December and one mid-season (late February to early March).
This project was a strategic levy investment in the Hort Innovation Summerfruit Fund