The Delicious Dilemma

Steve Lutz is an unlikely revolutionary, and in most businesses his message would hardly be considered shocking.

But when the president of the Washington Apple Commission told growers that they have to make the best product possible in order to please their consumers, it sent shock waves through the industry.

Specifically, Lutz was talking about the Red Delicious apple. Though the sorry state of that particular piece of fruit has been much commented on by consumers, apparently it was news to his audience.

“It sounds revolutionary to growers, but it is a basic fact that we have to satisfy the consumer,” Lutz says.

Anything about the Red Delicious is big news in Washington. It makes up more than half the production in what is the nation’s leading apple-growing state (more than a third of all the apples sold in the U.S. are Red Delicious).

In his speech, Lutz said that though properly grown and harvested Red Delicious apples are very good, too many of them aren’t at their best. He cited a survey performed for the commission that found that 20% of randomly selected Red Delicious shipments contained some apples that suffered from internal browning, mold or rot.

Beyond that, Red Delicious apples grown in borderline climates, harvested at less than optimum maturity or shipped or stored improperly are neither as sweet nor as crunchy as they should be.

Still, Lutz insists, it isn’t the apple that’s at fault. “This is less about declining quality than it is that the quality expectations of the consumer are higher than they have ever been.

“There are so many more choices today,” he says. “Part of this is because we’ve moved away from the concept of seasonality of fruit. Go back 10 years: What were the choices in winter? Apples, citrus and bananas. Now you’ve got Chilean grapes, Chilean soft fruit, papayas, mangoes. . . . It’s a new ballgame.

“Consumers have more choices than they’ve ever had, and when they have more choices, they have the ability to be more picky. If your product is not absolutely outstanding, the consumer is going to say ‘Thank you very much, Washington state, we’ll solve your quality issues for you by buying other fruit.’ ”

In fact, the Big Three apples--Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith--have seen their market share decline from 98% to 80% since 1985.

Another revolutionary declaration--for farmers, anyway--was Lutz’s reminder that they have to remember who their consumer really is. Because of the multitiered nature of the industry, a piece of fruit can pass through many hands before it gets to the person who will actually eat it.

“Our growers too often never see our real consumer,” he says. “We send apples to New York, to South America, to China, to Indonesia. We send fruit around the world, and we’ve had tremendous success.

“But we may have fallen into the habit of satisfying the buyer and the broker--the middlemen--and not the real consumers. Today, success is not only satisfying the buyer, it’s satisfying the consumer.”

He caught a lot of flak for making those observations. (Lutz diplomatically says “Well, I never intended to make the national wire services. It’s been brought to my attention that there’s nothing to be gained by bad-mouthing the product in the press. There’s no question an awful lot of growers and shippers out there are justifiably upset about having that kind of information in marketplace.”)

On the other hand, he says, it may be the right message at the right time. Saddled with a huge apple harvest and markets shrunk by the Asian economic crisis, the apple industry is suffering through a very tough year.

“When you’re successful, you assume everything you do is right because you’re successful,” he says. “It’s when you begin doing less well that you start asking the tough questions.”