YAKIMA — A cherry crop that met the region’s historic average but was better spread out over the summer months translated into improved sales in 2024 for Washington state and Northwest growers.
The 82nd annual Cherry Institute met Friday at the Yakima Convention and Event Center and the news was far less gloomy than the previous year, when a massive and late California cherry crop kept Northwest growers’ ample produce off grocery store shelves until after July 4.
“California shipments (in 2024) peaked on May 17, as opposed to June 12 in 2023. That’s a good thing,” said B.J. Thurlby, Northwest Cherry Growers president, in his review of the 2024 season.
“We got off to a good start in June, shipping just over 8 million boxes … and our early fruit was of excellent quality and helped drive promotions that led to regular purchases (through July and early August),” Thurlby added. “This allowed demand to exceed supply through the post-Fourth of July period.”
Northwest crop totals
The 2024 Northwest cherry crop totaled 19.5 million 20-pound boxes, roughly 800,000 boxes more of fresh cherries than the previous year’s regional crop. However, due to the 2023 glut of California cherries and difficulty selling Northwest cherries, Thurlby has estimated roughly 4 1/2 to 5 million boxes of cherries were grown but not picked that year.
Thurlby said the 2024 crop met the Northwest’s five-year average of 19.5 million boxes despite an early-July heat wave that saw a week of temperatures in the 100 to 105-degree range over much of Central and Eastern Washington and parts of Oregon.
“The last five years have been challenging — we’ve had one weather event after another,” he said. “The excessive heat in July pushed the fruit forward a bit; it compressed some of our (fruit harvest) in that window.
“But it wasn’t as bad as 2023, when we had 17 days in a row of 500,000 boxes per day. In 2024, we had only five days of 500,000 boxes, and they were spread throughout the season.”
Overall, the Pacific Coast’s cherry crop was 28.1 million 20-pound boxes last summer, the fifth largest total ever for the region, Thurlby said. That amount included 8.6 million boxes from California, with the rest from Northwest cherry growers.
Unlike last year, there was very little overlap between the California and Northwest crops, which helps keep cherries on the nation’s grocery store shelves for several months while providing a chance for Yakima Valley and other regional growers to sell their fruit as it was harvested, Thurlby said.
He noted about 1.59 million boxes of Rainiers were among the 2024 Northwest cherry crop, a bit more than 8% of the total harvest. And organic cherries bounced back from 2023, going from 1% to 2.8% of the Northwest cherry crop last summer.
Online promotions
One of the Northwest Cherry Growers organization’s main jobs is marketing the fruit both across the U.S. and around the world.
Older consumers tend to be the most loyal cherry purchasers, both for the fruit’s taste and its health benefits, said Karley Lange, director of domestic promotions for Northwest Cherry Growers.
Lange said age is the most predictive demographic of the typical cherry consumer, who tends to be 55 or older, owns their own home, lives in a two-person household and earns between $100,000 and $150,000 a year.
Cherry growers need to target younger customers and especially young families, with the latter group (households with children younger than 6) only comprising 6.4% of all cherry consumers, she added.
“(Younger families) are the demographic that we have been targeting in all of our digital marketing and social media messaging,” Lange said.
In 2024, those efforts included everything from digital ad campaigns for Kroger, Sam’s Club and Walmart customers to a smaller promotion at the Sugarpine Drive-in near Portland.
The Troutdale sandwich and ice cream stand generated lots of online interest from social media influencers that translated into actual trips to the business along the Sandy River, Lange said, with many of those visitors enjoying special cherry-flavored food and drinks.
As a bonus, the New York Times listed Sugarpine’s Cherries Jubilee Sundae as one of the 26 best desserts its reviewers ate in 2024, Lange said.
Online attention and accolades, combined with social media influencers touting cherries’ health benefits and providing videos of tasty cherry recipes, are one key to attracting new and younger consumers, she added.
“We’ve captured more consumers than we had at the beginning of last year,” Thurlby said. “And we’ve heard from our retail friends that the fruit was of exceptional quality. So that helps bring them back.”
International sales
Overseas, while marketing efforts included online campaigns and even advertising “wraps” on trains in Thailand, Northwest Cherry Growers’ Keith Hu, director of international operations, said in-store demos and samples are the most effective promotion.
Canada remains the top overseas market for Northwest cherries, buying 38.6% of the exported crop, followed by China, Latin America (mostly Mexico) and southeast Asia, led by Thailand and Vietnam, Hu said.
“Our bread and butter is still retail campaigns, the in-store demos,” Hu said. “Cherries are an impulse buy, so we need to get them in front of people.
“Overall, we had a very exciting year promoting cherries overseas,” he added, noting 30% of the total Northwest cherry crop was sold outside the U.S. “Our overseas retailers said they saw outstanding on-arrival quality. Their only complaint was we have too short of a season.”
