Lifting the category

The growth of grape tomato sales over the past deca10 years has been remarkable. Coverage in The Packer this week observes that the cherry/grape subcategory has grown from 6% of value in 1999 to 23% in 2005, according to statistics provided by The Perishables Group, Inc. Hothouse tomatoes on the vine have also show hot recent growth. This chart from The Perishables Group shows the tomato subcategories and their performance in the first 44 weeks of 2006. Note the strong 8.1% growth in dollar sales compared to year-ago numbers.