Hey Look Over Here

Hey, remember the produce department? That's how retail merchandisers may feel this week, trying to compete with Black Friday sales from Best Buy, Circuit City and various other retailers. Here is the Nov. 23 summary from the National Fruit and Vegetable Retail report from the USDA.

Ads continued to focus on Thanksgiving this week as retailers sought to capture the last-minute holiday rush. Fully prepared holiday dinners along with center-of-the-plate meat items were at the forefront of most ads. Some retailers that normally issue new promotions mid-week had extended their features through Thanksgiving Day and some ran full week ads beginning last week. Some stores with late week ads focused on general merchandise specials and did not feature produce items at all. Overall feature activity remained about the same for most items. Vegetables continued to see more activity than fruits as many fruit items were not featured at all due to a seasonal gap between domestic and imported product availability. Despite a slight decrease in activity as Thanksgiving holiday specials began to wrap up this week, the top items featured were the same as last week with some jostling in position. These included: cranberries, sweet potatoes, celery, pineapple, and asparagus. Other seasonal produce continued to be widely featured. These assorted nuts, cranberries, hard squash, imported figs, pomegranates, persimmons, and a variety of domestic and imported citrus. Thanksgiving holiday bouquets and plants continued to be featured heavily this week. Late week ads began to feature Christmas decorative items such as miniature trees and poinsettias.