 One would not necessarily find the start of football season and the beginning of the California pistachio season as an obvious common denominator denoting early September. However as fall turns into the dead of winter, these two diverse fields of endeavor find themselves importantly intertwined, so it's only fitting they both get underway at virtually the same time.
According to Karen Reinecke, president of The California Pistachio Commission in Fresno, Super Bowl weekend constitutes the biggest selling holiday for California pistachios. "It's bigger than Christmas and bigger than Thanksgiving," Reinecke said. "Super Bowl Sunday is the number one day of the year that people are snacking. Men are sitting in their Lazy-Boys and can consume an entire bag by themselves." She added that, of course, women are watching the game and munching on pistachios, too, but let's face it guys, we're usually the ones sitting in that Lazy-Boy.
And this year, there will be plenty of California pistachios to go around, not only for the
Super Bowl, but every other day as well. As an alternate bearing crop, pistachios have huge crops one year followed by a significantly downsized crop the following year. Year 2000 is the big crop, so California pistachios will be flying out to domestic and export markets as quick as they are sold.
Harvesting of California pistachios began a few weeks ago. Like a good James Bond martini, they are shaken (not stirred) mechanically from the trees into large bins which are transferred to the processing plant. The mechanized shaking takes less than one minute. The pistachios never hit the ground nor are they handled by human hands.
At the processing plant, they are hulled, dried, sorted and sized. Later the nuts are roasted, salted and sometimes dyed. Reinecke said that after roasting they are at a 3 percent moisture level to keep mold from forming.
Weather has been perfect for this year's pistachio crop because of the relative lack of humidity. "You need that desert climate," Reinecke said. Next year the harvest should be less because, as an alternate bearing crop, the tree takes a rest for the following year. Usually.
Sometimes it seems that pistachios have a mind of their own when it comes to the harvest. Reinecke said that twice in the 1990s ('92-'93, '97-'98), when growers were expecting the smaller harvest, they were surprised to find another booming harvest right on the heels of the big predecessor. "All the growers thought the crop estimates were way too high early. Then they saw the actual numbers and were shocked."
Of course, even the smaller harvest of California pistachios are huge in comparison to when the whole deal began. The first commercial crop of California pistachios was in 1976 when 1.5 million pounds were harvested. Compare that to 1998's record 187.5 million pound harvest or last year's "off" crop of 122.4 million pounds, and you can see that California pistachios have grown exponentially since the early days a quarter of a century ago. So with all these pistachios, growers had to find places to sell them, and the global marketplace has been very, very good to California pistachios.
Reinecke said, "We sell about 40 percent of our total shipments to export markets. Europe is the number one export market with Germany accounting for 20 million pounds." She added that the Asia market is also strong with China and Japan leading the way.
In the global arena, California pistachios go head to head with Iran. According to Reinecke, Iran produces 50 percent of the world's pistachios with California on its heels with about 35 percent. She said Greece, Italy and Turkey produce most of the rest, but it's the battle with Iran for pistachio global supremacy that takes center stage.
A big boon for California pistachios in Europe took place three years ago when the European Union (EU) banned Iranian pistachios because of aflatoxin. Even though the ban was lifted three months later, California pistachios had taken advantage of that big break, and became firmly entrenched.
In the United States, for many years, Reinecke said, the major buyers of pistachios were in the big markets of New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In the last few years, the commission has made a concerted merchandising effort in the Southeast with very good results. "The Southeast was always thought of as 'peanut country'," Reinecke said. "That area has really become a bright spot for us with sales really taking off."
Pistachios, as Reinecke says, "are the ultimate impulse item." She said that the best merchandising tip she has for retailers in selling pistachios is having great displays. Focus groups have told us that when they see pistachios in
big bulk displays, they tend to buy.
"Consumers don't seem to react to the price. Since pistachios are an impulse item, retailers do not have to drop the price." She added that in 10 stores where big displays were erected, pistachio sales showed a jump of between 100 and 270 percent and that was at the regular retail pricing.
And it didn't matter what time of year that these displays were put together. Reinecke said that even in the nontraditional spring months, pistachio sales showed
significant gains when they were aggressively displayed.
Traditional thinking always had peak pistachio buying during the time right before
Thanksgiving up until New Year's Day. However, the commission realized that the biggest day of the year when people have parties and are snacking comes about a month after the start of the new year. "Super Bowl Sunday is huge," Reinecke said. She also said that retailers were quick to jump on the fact that people were home snacking on Super Sunday.
Reinecke said, "Pistachios are a great product for the produce department. There is not a lot of shrink, it's year-round, it's nonperishable and is the number one profit nut for retailers. This huge profit margin makes it a gold mine for retailers." She said that many produce departments during a citrus freeze a couple of years ago were able to make up
much of their dollar losses from the freeze by selling pistachios.
The California Pistachio Commission is happy to help retailers by providing free instore display bins and in-ad artwork
that helps spread
the healthy pistachio message of "the snack food that is not a junk food."
And the commission likes to talk up the nutritional value of their product. They tout the relatively high levels of monosaturated fats, which scientists contend maintain HDL (that's the good one) cholesterol. And here's some more good news, there are 47 nuts in a single serving, according to USDA stats.
As is the case with all nuts, pistachios have no cholesterol, and you can't say that about many snack items you eat while watching Monday Night Football, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire or Survivor II. Lazy-Boy, here I come...
Pistachios
Season:
Pistachios are a year-round, alternate bearing crop
Weather:
Pistachios need to grow in a desert climate with very
little humidity
Merchandising Tip:
Have great displays because pistachios are impluse
items.
Profit Margin:
Huge profit margin makes pistachios number one
profit nut for retailers
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