Chinese fresh fruit e-commerce site Fruitday.com has teamed up with the U.S. Northwest and California cherry grower associations to provide consumers with the '2017 American cherry map'. 

The online graphics show the production areas of U.S. cherries, Chinese consumers' preferences toward cherries in terms of size, shape, taste, color and hardness (based on Fruitday's past sales data and blind consumer tests), and U.S. cherry varieties sourced by Fruitday over the last eight years.

In comments sent to Fresh Fruit Portal, Fruitday co-founder Loren Zhao explained the decision to create the guide was to boost consumer knowledge about the imported fruit.

“Consumers are more familiar with locally-produced Chinese cherries, for example the cherries from Dalian," he said.

"Comparatively, they might not be very aware of the situation surrounding imported cherries.

"Currently, the acceptability of U.S. cherries in China’s domestic market is higher, but consumers know very little of when is the best time to taste U.S. cherries and where U.S. cherry production is."

He said since Fruitday was founded, the team had been working with the California Cherry Board and Northwest Cherry Growers to promote U.S. cherries in China.

"This time, we collaborated to launch this cherry map, in the hope of increasing the knowledge of Chinese consumers about U.S. cherries, strengthening their ability to differentiate premium US cherries in the face of a complicated domestic cherry market and to choose premium cherries that come from the best production areas in the U.S.," he said.

"US cherries are our bestseller. While ensuring a stable supply of regular cherries varieties, we are also proactive to discover new cherry varieties and bring them back to the Chinese market.

"For example, Ruby cherries were brought into China by us. In the future, we will continue to proactively select the best U.S. cherries, through an integrated supply chain to let more consumers taste fresh U.S. cherries.”

Fruitday also organizes an annual festival, with marketing activities surrounding the California and Northwest deals. This year the company brought in the Northwest's 9ROW cherries.

This installment's theme is "the beautiful things in life", emphasizing the need to slow down in life and try some cherries. Fruitday also collaborated with publishers to incorporate Bob Dylan's song lyrics on its cherry packaging.

The company also expects a large crop of high quality fruit from the U.S. this year.

Photo: www.shutterstock.com

www.freshfruitportal.com