Monthly Shipping and Marketing Report | April 2024

Council Update

Council Meeting: The next Council meeting will be held on Wednesday & Thursday, June 19-20 in Minneapolis. If you are interested in attending the Council meeting, please let us know so we can be sure you are accommodated.

Mushroom Council Calls for Nominations

A call for nominations for positions beginning January 1, 2025, is now open. Completed nomination forms must be emailed or postmarked no later than May 1, 2024. The regions with positions available are:

Region 1 (All states except CA & PA) – One, one-year term (2025-2025)
Region 2 (PA) – Two, three-year terms (2025-2027)
Region 3 (CA) – One, three-year term

Mushroom growers have ideas, skills, experiences, and perspectives that would benefit the industry; be a voice for your industry by becoming part of the Council.

Eligibility: All producers, who produce, on average, over 500,000 pounds of mushrooms annually for fresh use and are not exempt may nominate one or more candidates, provided that they produce within the specified region. To qualify as a candidate or to nominate a candidate, an individual must be a producer. Producer means any person engaged in the production of mushrooms who owns or shares the ownership and risk of loss of such mushrooms and who produces, on average, over 500,000 pounds of mushrooms per year for the fresh market and not exempt from paying assessments.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Mushroom Council encourage all eligible producers, including women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities to participate and seek nomination.

For more information, please contact [email protected].

FREE WEBINAR
What food inflation means for your shoppers and how it affects their choices
Who is presenting: Phil Lempert, Supermarket Guru
Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT (1:00 PM CST)
Cost: FREE
Why you should attend as a mushroom grower/distributor: Inflation can significantly impact consumer spending habits. By attending this webinar, growers and distributors can gain insights into how inflation affects their customers’ purchasing decisions, including their willingness to buy mushrooms, while learning to navigate the complexities of the current economic landscape, and make informed business decisions to better serve their customers.
REGISTER NOW

Shipment Summary

Download Current Charts

Channel Highlights

CONSUMER

March:

Mushroom Monday is going strong, we’ve partnered with some influencers and seen interest on our social media from both consumers and operators.
- ThatCrazySubGuy on Instagram and TikTok
- CookingwithRel on Instagram
- Program Messaging Guide and Assets
We’ve partnered with Chef’s Roll to develop beautiful, chef-approved recipes for Mushroom Monday!
- Crispy Fried Oyster Mushrooms
- Crimini Mushroom Toast
The Mushroom Loyalist campaign is in full swing!
- Program Assets and Information

April:

Chef’s Roll and Influencers will continue to roll out content to celebrate Mushroom Monday
- Mushroom Monday Influencer, That Crazy Sub Guy shared the #66 Portabella Beef Sub on his TikTok this month. He continued the #MushroomMonday posting organically with a surprise sub video for this wife which resulted in an additional 133K views and impressions between TikTok and Instagram outside of our partnership agreement. Another Mushroom Monday Influencer, Cooking With Rel, shared where mushroom lovers should dine out in Portland to celebrate Mushroom Monday.
Elements of the Mushroom Loyalist Campaign have launched
- Trade Landing Page
- Streaming Ads are live on YouTube
- Chicory Ads (shoppable ads) are live and show up next to mushroom-adjacent recipes, encouraging direct purchase.
Jersey Mike’s highlighted their commitment to sustainability via a social media post on Earth Day celebrating their Portabella Mushroom sandwich, which was a collab post with the Mushroom Council

May:

Chef’s Roll Content alongside Mushroom Monday Influencers will continue to be a focus across social media
Chicory/Catalina ads are continuing through the month of May
The Mushroom Council will be supporting a few events, look for content across social and digital media:
- May 4-5th – Far West Fungi’s Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival in Santa Cruz, California
- May 16th – James Beard Public Market in Portland, Oregon

MUSHROOMS IN SCHOOLS

We encourage other channels to amplify Mushrooms in Schools by sharing posts on Facebook and Twitter.
Mushrooms in Schools has many nutrition education resources for all age ranges of children. For a quick resource to share out, use our blog which highlights key resources for our CACFP audience.

March:

Highlight Schools that incorporate mushrooms on their menu.
- Like/comment/share our posts on Facebook, click the links below to view the posts

April:

Prepare for recipe contest for the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) Conference which the School Nutrition Team will be attending April 22-26, 2024, in Orlando, Florida.
Highlight Mushrooms in Schools new webpage focusing on WIC, Child Care, and Head Start Audiences
In April, schools celebrate National Earth Day, which our Farm to School resources can be part of the celebration. Additionally, Mushrooms in Schools will be attending the National CACFP Conference, where we will have to opportunity to speak with operators and share our resources. Mushrooms in Schools has recipes, resources, and marketing materials for schools and day care centers to engage students this month.

Marketing Summary

Notable Highlights for February

Pinterest sent 240% more traffic to the website than the previous month. We also saw an increase in impressions and engagements on Pinterest in February. This is due to our change in creative strategy for Pinterest posts, as well as a reclassification on how we measure Pinterest data.
Pinterest continues to be our largest traffic driving social tactic.
Although impressions were up 75% on Facebook in comparison to last year, we saw a drop in engagements. This is partially due to the fact that last February we ran a very successful giveaway, which increased our engagements.
This year we are investing more dollars into Instagram. We are running both engagement and traffic ads on this platform. With this increase, we saw an increase in engagements and traffic to the site from Instagram.

*YouTube engagement metrics have changed. Digital metrics are constantly evolving, so we created our own updated Engagement metrics (comments + shares + likes + dislikes + subscribers lost + subscribers gained)

Topline Report

Tracker Highlights – Period ending 03/24/2024

The latest retail data looking at the weeks ending March 25th is now available. A few of the highlights:

Retail food and beverage inflation continued to be low, with deflationary prices for mushrooms in the latest four weeks. Foodservice prices are increasing much faster.
Mushroom retail dollar sales declined 4.4%, with volume down 3.8%.
Specialty mushrooms (-8.1% in YOY pounds) and white mushrooms (-5.3% YOY) had bigger volume declines, whereas portabella pound sales grew by 0.5% year-on-year.
The quad week saw a 1.6% decline over the latest quad week volume sales. This is in line with historic averages.
The share of dollars sold on promotion increased to 20% in the quad week.
Whole mushrooms continued to outperform sliced/cut/diced.

Download your copy of the quick two-page summary, the plug and play PowerPoint ready for use, and the in-depth Excel data file.