Because their first customer touch points (stores associates) go an extra mile to communicate and connect with their customers.

Just 15 minutes back I was at a Delta Maxi store near my Hotel in Belgrade. I buy two pints of Jelen Pivo (an excellent Serbian beer, a brand and market leader – but that is besides the point) among other eatable stuff and some mineral water.

At check-out, the young lady goes an extra mile in communicating to me, a foreigner who did not understood Serbian at all, that if I return back the empty beer bottles I’ll get back 30 Serbian Dinars. How she communicated is a separate story and no need to retell here – that is not important.

That she communicated well with a foreigner, despite the language barrier, is the fundamental point here. Someone had really taken care to drill down that work ethics.

Thank you young lady and Delta Maxi – you really made my day today.

“Want to find freshness of fruits and vegetables? Just use your ears. It’s not fresh till you hear a delicious frrrunch”

Surprisingly, this advertisement is by Samsung to promote their refrigerators. I am amazed to see use of fruit and vegetables in advertising in India. Just try to count ads for cosmetics, shampoos, wellness drugs, sports goods, stationery items, even men underwear ha! ha! (remember Amul Macho, monkeys and those silly bananas). It is not only in India – I saw similar trend lately in last few months elsewhere also in as diverse countries like Serbia, Oman and Turkey.

Power of fruit and vegetables to connote freshness anywhere is really astounding. It is universal. Period.

Why no Indian retailer is now advertising fresh produce except to communicate their so called cheap prices with God know comparative with what which incidentally is always called “Market” with a capital M.

Last advertisement recorded (to my knowledge) to promote fruit and vegetables and retailer as a brand in India was perhaps released on telly ten years back by one of the companies I proudly served. Who from that era does not still remember stalwarts of their times like T.N.Seshan, Kiran Bedi etc promoting the humble fruit and vegetables for their own sake. But as cliché goes – those were the times….or as Bob Dylan would have said …The Times They Are a-Changin’

It was 7.40 pm y’day. My Nokia was about to buzz and push a short message (sms) from a prominent Delhi fresh produce retailer announcing prices for important fruit vegetables.

Behold – the message arrived with a celestial certainty. This has been a 7.40 pm ritual for a while. And I am beginning to relish it – not because I shall go run and hunt bargain but because it has given me some food, or shall I say some f+v for thought.

You may say fresh produce retail and this particular retailer has come of digital age in India. Not the least – this sms strategy could have been a smart idea had it marched past my critical mind. Many questions were hammering my mind since the day I got first message.

Q1 – Why this message at 7.40 pm when the retailer has the least stock and most of the display has already gone awry under discerning customers’ hands. A relook at the message corrected my oversight – the message was meant for next day.

Q2 – Why this message is being sent to me – not to my wife who is not a regular but sometime buys from this retailer during stock-out situation. She could have been a smart target for such a message.

Q3 – Where from this retailer got my mobile number. It could not be from a loyalty card info I passed to them as this retailer has never run such a program. Despite being the largest fresh produce retailer with widest reach in Delhi and surrounding region they have never tried (or shall I say cared) to build such a customer database. (In fact this retailer does not pick the point of scale customer data as all POS scales are stand-alone equipment -not linked with their central server).

More on this in store next day – Many of rates mentioned in the message didn’t match the rates at my neighborhood store. As I was aware that at this retailer all stores were grouped to location specific demographic profile – I check another store – same story – few rates did not match.

Some inferences are very obvious – like

• My cell number was randomly picked from either my service provider – who sold it without my consent or some scammer picked my number from either Internet or elsewhere and sold to company as a prospective customer. Either way – SMS did not come to me as a well thought of strategy
• Someone at the company did not either care to proofread the messages or do the pricing as per sent messages. Will it affect sale – Obviously a customer will feel cheated if actual prices are more and if lesser than s(he) will never bother to read the message. Counterproductive either way.
• My biggest worry was some competitor picking up this retailer’s next day prices and improving same at their own stores in this retailer’s vicinity. In fact I used this tactics many year’s back for one of the early organized retailer in Delhi. But at that time I had to depute a person during every night and use social engineering to get insider price advantage. If with crude network I was able to do change prices twice daily at 20 odd competing stores, now with sophisticated software and bandwidth, changing prices at a store, any time of the day, is a cake walk.

Technology can be counterproductive if not used in a right way without applying mind.

Fresh produce retail is a fascinating subject.

Last evening at a wet market, I witnessed an elderly woman repeatedly fingering mangoes to decide whether to buy or not. May be she wanted to know how long the fruit shall stay good or are the mangoes ripe enough to be consumed immediately or she’ll have to wait; if yes, how long she and her family will have to wait.

While these questions are legitimate, the fresh produce retailer may not have the right answers. And this difficulty in finding the right answers is what makes fresh produce retail a fascinating subject.

The concept of ‘Fresh’ itself is enchanting. By the way – what is considered ‘Fresh’ in retail? Does a common theme or thread binds ‘Fresh’?

To a front end retailer, ‘Fresh’ is a product category whose value decrease due to quality loss which result in price reductions (impacts revenue), or even result in products being thrown or blown away (Dump & Shrink), a challenge he daily faces while trying to balance overstocks and stock-outs by attempting correct indenting as far as possible.

Retailer also knows that if product waste in a retail outlet is too low, this could signify a risk of empty shelves or his inability to offer fresh products to his customers (little sales due to stocking of stale and dying products). He also knows in heart of hearts that presence of Fresh” is a major customer footfall driver for his store – day in and day out.

While retailer’s ‘Fresh’ is a struggle balancing Inventory – Profits – Footfalls – Shrink – Revenue – FIFO – FEFO – LIFO, buyers ‘Fresh’ is a constant conflict (quite often compromise) between purchasing indented quantities of products with ever changing quality at the lowest prices.

From logistics perspective, ‘Fresh’ is ‘Perishability’, to be delivered fastest to store shelves in right environment. Product has to be quickly out of their custody (inventory) without loss and value.

‘Fresh’ connotes “Quality” to customers with all its finer nuances, contexts and equations. Period!

In such a scenario, can we help that old women find right answers, while making the work of the fresh produce purchaser, logistics operator and retailer lesser complex?

My bets are once again placed on technology led zero defect fresh produce production and shelf life modeling techniques. That is the only economical way to achieve uniform and precise products in the first place. “Quality is Free” here. Vegetopia, some will say.

Fresh produce traders in India have a saying, “all fingers are not equal” when pushing non standardized products to customers.

For situation like either innovative (but costly) machines like ripeness, color and weight specific sorter graders or plain vanilla sorting / grading by human hands comes to rescue.

Here Quality, sorry ‘Fresh’ comes at a Cost, quite often a considerable cost.

The choice is ours!

Some pictures subtly conceal their real meaning and purpose.

Inspired by brilliant pictures of fauna and flora at “Life” series presently on air at Discovery Channel, these pictures collection is an effort to find art at unlikely place – DISEASE.

These pictures have been culled from an archive of a plant pathologist team mate who has painstakingly built this collection  from assorted resources for a technical presentation. Pictures represent some common insect, pests and diseases of fruit and vegetables.