Having the experience and insight of walking in both a supplier’s and retailer’s shoes has many benefits, and, luckily for apples, Julie DeJarnatt has trekked such a path. As the Director of Brand Strategy for Chelan Fresh and a former executive for Walmart, Julie sees the landscape in a unique and beneficial way. The puzzle pieces that currently lay before her are both a challenge and an opportunity. Her main goal: increase apple consumption and revive the consumer attitude and awareness around the category.
“There are multiple factors contributing to the decline of fresh apple consumption in the United States market. Some of the setbacks will require our industry to ensure we are consistently shipping fresh apples that will delight shoppers every single time. Not every variety is bred to go year-round, but many are getting pushed to go longer each season,” Julie tells me. “There are incredible new varieties that eat really well when grown in specific microclimates and elevations, but at times, they are being grown in the wrong locations. These issues will naturally lead to an inconsistent eating experience for the shopper which lowers purchase frequency and repeat buys.”
Julie adds that these are hard issues for growers and warehouses to tackle as they could reduce bins per acre and packs per bin.
“But the bigger issue in my mind is much simpler and easier to address. The fresh apple industry is not communicating with U.S. consumers in a scalable and meaningful way regarding the basic benefits of eating fresh apples. Everyone is doing a little something, but nothing to the magnitude needed to move the needle on consumption,” Julie expresses, further detailing the concern. “Unfortunately, consumers are more often hearing that apples are too high in sugar to qualify for the fad of the moment. Or, even worse, they see apples being portrayed in commercials by other fresh produce brands that are targeted to children or on Dirty Dozen Lists, telling families that apples are poisonous and full of pesticides.”
In the face of such obstacles, Julie has taken up the mantle and created a group determined to be harbingers of change for the trajectory of apple consumption. While the apple advocates do not have an official name, they are not letting it stop them from getting started.
"If we can come together on a unified mission and message, it will be powerful.”
Julie DeJarnatt, Director of Retail Strategy, Chelan Fresh
While Julie is currently the group member at the mic, she is just one of a group of 46 like-minded individuals on board the initiative, which includes growers as well as sales and marketing desks.
“This group is made up of many industry-leading apple growers and marketers,” Julie reveals, then takes a pause before opening the conversation again. “The thing that makes this initiative new and different is that it is all-inclusive and collaborative. We are not being distracted by growing regions—or what I call the old ‘turf wars’ between Washington and other growing areas. Instead, we are focused on supporting all apple varieties—the classics and the new flavors.”
This approach enables the group to benefit all apple growers, packers, shippers, marketers, sales team members, and retail partners.
“If we can come together on a unified mission and message, it will be powerful,” Julie says.
The advocacy begins with a campaign directly targeted to consumers in an effort to inspire current fresh apple buyers to consume apples more frequently and in new usage occasions.
“We want to recapture lapsed or non-apple buyers’ attention with the health benefits of incorporating fresh apples into their diet and encourage them to explore new flavor profiles that have been introduced over the last few seasons. There has been a lot of innovation in both the varieties that are grown today and the storage techniques that keep them crisp and flavorful all season long,” Julie expresses.
It is a confusing time to be a consumer. While many may think the more choices the better and the more messaging the more fruitful, today’s resources are full of mixed messages—made even more complicated by confirmation bias.
“Our industry needs to take back control of the narrative and share all of the positive ways in which fresh apples can benefit your health, level up your favorite recipes, and reduce food waste,” Julie states, and I can feel the passion in each word she punctuates.
So, I ask her, how this inspired her and those like-minded advocates in the apple industry to take action?
“The one thing we can all agree on is that the fresh apple consumption decline in the U.S. market is real and something needs to change. There is already so much invested into growing fresh apples each season, and with many of our fixed costs continuing to rise, any decline in demand makes it that much harder to return a profit,” Julie says. “You can see the evidence of this reality by the rate at which private equity is entering the industry; 100 percent, family-owned and operated fresh apple companies have now become the exception versus the norm. We have nothing to lose by engaging the end-use buyers of the fresh apples we all work so hard to produce and influencing them to
buy more.”
"Our industry needs to take back control of the narrative and share all of the positive ways in which fresh apples can benefit your health, level up your favorite recipes, and reduce food waste."
Turning to her retail roots, Julie is rallying the buy-side as well.
“We have six working committees within this project, one of which is focused on retailer partnerships. There is a critical place for retailers to participate in this program and for them to benefit from its success,” she explains. “Retail buyers are still the primary point of access to shoppers. We need them to see apples as a growth category versus a commodity. The difference being how we work together to drive demand and traffic versus apples being leveraged as a profit driver to fund other categories of growth.”
Already, the group has several retail partners engaged in this project, and each is bringing forward unique ideas on how they can leverage the demand the group plans to create to drive performance in their stores
and online.
This is only the beginning, Julie tells me.
Pen in hand, I sense her urgency. I know there is more to come. 
