FRESHCONOMICS — The Podcast of the Fresh Produce Business

David Del Pino

I'm David Del Pino, and this is Freshconomics— Welcome to the Fresh Produce Business— A world where uncertainty is the only constant and volatility shapes every decision. Every day, remarkable people navigate this chaos with skill and courage. Join me as we explore the hidden logic of this industry to decode what others call unpredictable. Help me connect with the community of professionals in the fresh produce industry. Visit my blog at DavidDelPino.com where you'll find out how to get your copy of the book Freshconomics. And feel free to send any questions to: web@daviddelpino.com.

  1. Ep. 13. Tycoons Crashing into Fresh Produce

    4d ago

    Ep. 13. Tycoons Crashing into Fresh Produce

    In German there is a word, Schadenfreude, which roughly translates as “joy at someone else’s harm”. It refers to the pleasure one feels at watching another person suffer or fail. Friends, don’t do it. It’s not nice. Especially in our business. I know that some of our competitors can become actually insufferable, and when they get hit with bad harvests or wiped out by pests, we can’t help feeling certain relief. But it’s still wrong. We know all too well that we could be next when fortune’s wheel rolls round again. And yet… I cannot suppress an enormous guilty pleasure when I watch the technology tycoons crashing — over and over again — every time they put a tiny foot into the world of food, or directly into our agricultural and fresh produce business. I no longer know if it’s the influence of Hollywood films, which have turned the “billionaire tech-bro” into the favorite villain of our times. Well… I know is a stereotype, but I don’t think I can blame the movies for this one. I think this guilty pleasure has more to do with the arrogance I perceive in the projects these billionaires launch. And it goes without saying that this business (the fresh produce business) smashes the arrogant. You can have all the money in the world and all the confidence you like, but in our sector, just a couple of consecutive mistakes bring well-experienced professionals to their knees. So, in the fresh produce industry we live in a different kind of film, with no clear superheroes and no clear villains. We live more like in a low-budget B-movie — but our characters (I have to say) are far more authentic than theirs. Anyway, let me tell you about the adventures of some of these tycoons in our business.

    18 min
  2. Ep. 12. Natural Promotions

    May 28

    Ep. 12. Natural Promotions

    It is time to take on another one of those topics that is both a curse and a blessing. Let’s talk about promotions. Needless to say we usually talk about promotions in general, as if all types of promotions were all the same thing. The retailer asks for a promotion, we run a promotion, the supermarket flyer goes out, the pallets are shipped at a lower price, and we move on to the next week. But behind that single word are two very different beasts. One can be the salvation of a season; the other can be a slow painful loss of profitability that no one bothers to measure. So today I want to draw a line between the two. I want to give them names, give you a way of thinking about each of them, and share a couple of simple calculations (included in my book) that I think every fresh produce manager should run, at least once a year, just to keep their feet on the ground. Are running Natural Promotions or Marketing Promotions? You better now it before hand, because Promotions are a value-distorting element of the first order. Few attributes break the price-value relationship as profoundly as a promotion does. Promotions are an absolute necessity, both for producers and for retailers. There is no fresh produce business operating at scale that does not run them. But they also accelerate the evolution of the value cycle; and, normally, in the wrong direction. The more promotions we need to run, the faster the price-value reference of our product gets destroyed. The conclusion I’d like you to take away from this episode is this: not every promotion is a promotion in the same sense. And if can clearly state it during the negotiation, you’ll find that many of the conversations with retailers, sales managers and finance controllers become much easier.

    17 min
  3. Ep. 11. Turnover or Margin?

    May 21

    Ep. 11. Turnover or Margin?

    I have spoken already in previous episodes about the difficulty, in our business, of building knowledge through experience. Because of volatility, what worked yesterday is no longer useful today. I often use the example of rain. Sometimes it rains and it causes us a quality problem or a loss of crop, and other times it rains, exactly the same, and absolutely nothing happens. That’s why this business feels so essentially tactical. And in that sense, there seem to be plenty of examples of successful and innovative people in the industry who got there without any conscious or thoughtful strategic reflection. There are people who connect and align with the fundamentals of their business naturally, or simply by imitating the practices of others who have succeeded in the sector before them. In any case, paying attention to these fundamental truths of the business and managing accordingly — whether tactically or strategically — requires, in our world, a very particular connection with the day-to-day sales development. And yes, this episode is about salespeople. A function that is somewhat looked down upon as a mere salesforce, but in the fresh produce world is strategically essential to keep the company profitable. And the reason this is so, is quite far removed from the view we tend to have about how salespeople should be managed. Yes, I mean the typical: “Hey, I don’t want any excuses… you got sell at a higher price.” That we have to accept that, in the fresh produce business, we have to manage our volatile products in our uncertain markets. Therefore, business management will be closely tied to the difficulty of the trading management... And that we are constantly face the paradox of  Turnover Vs. Margin. And a warning before we start: I’m going to have to use a few concepts from accounting, business management and marketing that I hope doesn’t give you a headache… Let’s see how it goes!

    22 min
  4. Ep. 10. What is a F&V Specialty?

    May 14

    Ep. 10. What is a F&V Specialty?

    There are words we use so often in this business that, by the sheer act of repetition, they end up meaning nothing at all. We pass them around in meetings and on calls as if everyone agreed on what they referred to, and only when someone places a particular example on the table do we realise that each of us was holding a different definition in our head. “Specialty” is, without a doubt, one of those words. It sounds prestigious, it suggests value, it dresses up presentations and product catalogues. And yet, the moment you press on it, the conversation derails. Nooo, come on, that's not a specialty! Aaah, but neither is that one! So what are we actually talking about? From my point of view, the key is that the concept is dynamic. What was once a specialty is liable to become just another item in the assortment. A phrase I used to enjoy repeating, internally, with my team was: “today's specialties are tomorrow's commodities”. (A line I now avoid, because, as you know, I'm convinced we never really work with commodities - but rather with what I've called Freshmodities). Around this concept, in the book Freshconomics, I reveal a methodology for innovation in fruit and vegetable products. The methodology pivots on a strategic review matrix for fresh produce, which I have, with "great originality", named the Fresh Produce Strategy Matrix — the FPS Matrix for short. It has been enormously useful to me over the past 2 decades, both in product development decisions and in mapping our competitive position against others. (*Check the FPS Matrix in the Episode post on DavidDelPino.com) In today's episode, I want to take that overused word back to the workshop, strip it down, and try to put it back together with a more useful meaning. Because, as we'll see, what we call a specialty today may well stop being one tomorrow, and confusing the two costs real money.

    14 min

About

I'm David Del Pino, and this is Freshconomics— Welcome to the Fresh Produce Business— A world where uncertainty is the only constant and volatility shapes every decision. Every day, remarkable people navigate this chaos with skill and courage. Join me as we explore the hidden logic of this industry to decode what others call unpredictable. Help me connect with the community of professionals in the fresh produce industry. Visit my blog at DavidDelPino.com where you'll find out how to get your copy of the book Freshconomics. And feel free to send any questions to: web@daviddelpino.com.