Shipping Reports

Monthly Shipping Report | November 2014

November 25, 2014

COUNCIL UPDATE

  • The 23rd North American Mushroom Conference is taking place in San Juan, Puerto Rico on January 22-24, 2015. To register, visit mushroomconference.org. The Council will hold its first meeting of 2015 on Thursday, January 22 before the NAMC opening reception.
  • The November issue of Mushrooms and Health Global Initiative Bulletin can be viewed here.
  • Exempt Producers: 2014 exemption numbers will expire on December 31 and it is necessary to reapply for the 2015 calendar year. Applications, as a courtesy, will be mailed to those who were exempt this year. If you would like an application, they can be found online at mushroomcouncil.org or contact Cheryl at 408-432-7210 or [email protected]

 

SHIMPENT SUMMARY

First Handler Report August 2014

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To see current charts click here.

 

MARKETING SUMMARY

Mushroom Council Marketing Summary –October 2014

October 2014 Media Impressions

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October consumer media highlights featured mushrooms in articles about Blendability, versatility, umami/flavor, vitamin D, antioxidants and weight management. Click on the links below to view the full stories.

Trade Media
Mushroom Marketing and Blendability Spotlights were shared with the Produce Business, Grocery Headquarters and Food Management

 

  • Concluded the Mushroom Month partnership with Serious Eats with the program delivering high engagement rates, highlighting Blendability and promoting the various health and culinary benefits of mushrooms across sponsored posts, custom recipes, advertising banner assets and social promotions.
    • Resulted in nearly 2.9M impressions and 2K clicks, consumers showed best reception for:
      • Chef Linton’s “Craveable Mushroom Topping,” highest performing post with 51K total page views and 1.9K+ Facebook engagements
      • Custom “Mushroom Dumplings” recipe created by Serious Eats garnered 16K+ page views
    • High time-spent-on-page rates (2:01 minutes average), meaning that users were actively engaging with the content produced
    • Strong organic social sharing and conversations emerged on social media
  • Dietitian and longtime mushroom fan, Toby Amidor, hosted a mushroom-centric national, satellite media tour about fall family wellness discussing Blendability and nutritional benefits. Results included placements in 11 television markets, 12 radio stations, seven online outlets and a national press release for a combined reach of 11M+ impressions.
  • The Mushroom Channel engaged with eight food service partners including Seasons 52, Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurants, LongHorn Steakhouse, Green Mills Café, Copeland’s of New Orleans, Edwardos Natural Pizza, Grand Luxe Café and Giordano’s Pizza.
    • Promoted LongHorn Steakhouse’s extended menu item, The Harvest Mushroom Filet across social with paid support on Facebook
  • At the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 2014 Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE), more than 560 prominent nutrition and food influencers tasted the delicious mushroom blend at the Council-sponsored Gala. At the Council’s gala table, eight top nutrition influencers with expertise in school foodservice, research, performance dining, media and culinary services convened to network regarding 2015 programming opportunities. The menu featured two blend recipes as the main course and spotlighted new ways to use mushrooms on the plate in the appetizer salad with shiitake bacon and a vegetarian entrée with mushrooms at the center of the plate. The Council met and discussed benefits of mushrooms with more than 400 attendees who visited the booth to receive health and culinary information.
Council Precense at the Gala Program

Council Precense at the Gala Program

  • twitter-party_fruits-veggiesOctober Culinary Institute for America’s video featured CIA Chef, Chef Bill Briwa and Bart Minor sharing a hearty, mushroom/meat blend chili recipe. The video was featured in a National Chili Month blog post on mushroominfo.com and recevied 100+ views.
    • Facebook post promoting the blog post received 2.6K+ likes and 600+ shares
  • Participated in a Twitter party hosted by Fruits and Veggies – More Matters to share ways mushrooms can be incorporated in seasonal, kid-friendly dishes for Halloween entertaining.Resulted in 1.6K+ tweets, 360K+ impressions and garnered 180+ unique participants
  • Four promoted Facebook posts included content promoting Longhorn Steakhouse; National Mushroom Day; National Chili Month and The Council’s involvement in the Epcot Food & Wine Festival.
    • Resulted in 12K+ likes, 1.7K+ shares, 1K+ link clicks, $0.10 cost per like, $4.39 cost per every 1K engagements while reaching 190K+ people

Post by The Mushroom Channel.

Post by The Mushroom Channel.

Post by The Mushroom Channel.
  • Search ad words accounted for 13 percent of total visits in October. Top performing paid keywords included: mushroom recipes, vitamin D foods and mushroom soup.

 

ON THE HORIZON

  • Winter nutrition newsletter in December that will feature all things Blendability including new study information, recipes as well as chef and dietitian tips and tricks.
  • Fielding 2014 health professionals’ survey via Today’s Dietitian to track health professional knowledge and awareness on current mushroom benchmarks and messaging.
October 14 Traffic

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Announcing the 2014 Swap It or Top It recipe contest winners via the Produce for Better Health Foundation (PBH) in October.

For more detailed social analytics download the NEW Social Analytics Report here.

 

FOODSERVICE SUMMARY

As the year starts to wind down, everything looks up for the concept of Blendability and the overall usage of mushrooms in foodservice.

Savannah-Public-Schools

Savannah: The winner of our Blendability Recipe Contest, Jeffrey Quasha, has become quite the ambassador for Blendability. Besides menuing more items than ever at Savannah Memorial Hospital, Chef Quasha has brought the concept to Savannah Public Schools where the students loved their meal and the district is looking to put Blendability on the menu. The school event was covered by Savannah Morning News and the video can be seen at here.

RCA-and-Johnson-WalesRCA and Johnson & Wales: The Council presented to the New England chapter of Research Chefs Association on the campus of Johnson & Wales University, one of the premier culinary schools in the U.S. The presentation included a demo from Mushroom Council Chef Ambassador Jehangir Mehta and a presentation by Steve Solomon on the benefits of Blendability. More than 100 professionals attended, and the meeting kicked off a recipe contest open to the first 20 students at Johnson & Wales. Student sign-up was complete in minutes with recipes due before the end of the year.

Chain Restaurants Love Mushrooms: Fall is usually a prime time for chains to introduce or re-introduce popular mushroom items to their menus. Among others, three major chains—Wendy’s, Olive Garden and Checkers—are presently featuring mushroom items. Wendy’s has brought back its popular, well-selling Bacon and Portabella Melt on Brioche on TV. Checkers has introduced its first Prime Time Steakhouse Burger with Mushrooms on TV, radio and FSIs. Checkers is a regional chain, primarily in the South, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, so there use of mushrooms is significant.
Chain-Restaurants

Olive Garden has introduced a new consumer contest where consumers can vote for their favorite Tour of Italy favorites and win a trip to Italy. There are three items and one is a Chicken Lombardi with Fettucine and Portabello. Be sure to get in and vote.
foodservice_olive-garden

Epcot Food & Wine Festival: The Disney Festival, which showed Mushroom Blendability in kiosks around the Park as well as at parties, events, dinners and demos, ended just recently. As if Blendability was not seen enough throughout the Festival, Disney chefs ended with two more demos including one for a Bella Blue Burger and another for a Turkey-Mushroom Meatball with Kale and Wheatberries. Final numbers of how many people attended and saw Blendability in action will be forthcoming.
foodservice_epcot

The Council continues to work with colleges and to get the message out on Blendability. Stanford University continues to introduce new items including their Blended Taco. And the Council worked with ICCA/GCIA which is a group of smaller chains. At their initial meeting in Seattle, they toured a mushroom farm and sampled several great Blendable items made by The Mushroom Council and GCIA’s other sponsors.
foodservice_stanford-university

 

SCHOOL NUTRITION SUMMARY

  • Salem, Oregon hosted a mushroom blended test for a major foodservice management company early in the month. The entire cafeteria menu of McKay High School was converted to mushroom blended products including burgers, pasta bar, and tacos. Students loved the new blended products and shared their enthusiasm via social media. The Council and the foodservice management company will use this pilot to build a program promoting the blend to be distributed to all contracted K-12 schools in 2015.
  • JTM added a mushroom blended Turkey Burger to their product offering joining the seven beef blended products.
  • Council representatives met with Dallas Independent School District to encourage a mushroom Harvest of the Month program.
  • Council staff attended the Maryland School Nutrition Show and New York School Nutrition Show in October. Staff will attend the California School Nutrition Show in Sacramento in November.
  • Mushroom blendability was featured in a Chefs Move to Schools Event in Savanah Public Schools. This was a result of the Compass blendability competition sponsored by the Council earlier in 2014. The winning chef from the competition was invited to prepare lunch for students in Savannah. A menu development meeting with the district director is planned for early January. See article here: East Broad’s cafeteria goes gourmet for a day, Savannah Morning News, 10/17
  • Mushroom blended products are currently being tested in Washington D.C. public schools. They will be tested with students in early February for a late semester promotion.
  • Case studies and recipes were added to the school nutrition website. All resources can be found at mushroomsinschools.com
  • Mushroom Blendability ads ran in the October issue of School Nutrition Magazine along with blendability featured ads by Advance Pierre and JTM
  • Council School Nutrition resources can be found here.

 

RETAIL SUMMARY

Retail Data 10/05/2014

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The Topline report week ending 10/05/14 was sent to the industry on 11/17/14; click here to access the report online.
Topline Retail Report – Highlights – (4 and 52 Weeks Ending 10/05/2014)

Spotlight – Notable and Newsworthy

Retail_newsworthy-nov

Total Mushrooms – 4 Weeks

  • retail_mushroom-outpacedThe Total U.S. dollar sales trend of +4.2% outpaced Total Produce’s growth of +2.8% by +1.4 points
  • Northeast led in dollar growth rate at +6.6%, followed by Midsouth at +5.6%
  • On a Market basis, Albany posted strong dollar growth at +15.6%. Jacksonville posted the largest decline, down -3.4%
  • Total U.S. Organic dollar sales grew +27.6%, driven by California (+70.1%) which holds a 13.4% share of total Organic dollars
  • Volume in pounds for Total U.S. increased +3.9% and Southeast led the Regions with a volume increase of +6.3%. Plains was flat
  • At the Market level, Charlotte showed the largest increase in volume at +15.1%
  • Total Organic volume increased +24.9%, driven by Great Lakes (+14.1%) which holds a 47.5% share of total Organic volume

Segment/Variety – 4 Weeks

  • segment-variety-52wkTotal U.S. dollar sales of the White segment increased +2.5% while Brown mushrooms exhibited growth of +6.3%
  • Cremini mushrooms grew dollar sales +4.9% and Portabellas increased +9.5%
  • On a Regional basis, White mushroom growth rates were up in all Regions except for Southeast (-2.7%). Northeast posted the largest growth rate at +5.9%
  • Brown mushrooms posted growth in seven of eight regions. Plains dollars declined -1.0%, while dollars in Southeast grew +14.2%
  • White segment dollars were down in 11 of 49 Markets with results ranging from growth of +20.5% in Hartford/Springfield to a decline of -14.0% in Jacksonville. In the Brown segment, 40 of 49 Markets posted strong gains, including Tampa (+23.1%), Albany (+17.7%) and Philadelphia (+17.7%)
  • Total U.S. volume in pounds for the White segment was up +1.1%, while the Brown segment saw overall volume growth of +9.7%, driven by Cremini mushrooms, up +7.4%
  • In the Brown segment, Southeast led Regional volume growth at +31.6%. Plains declined -4.5%

Total Mushrooms – 52 Weeks

  • segment-variety-52wkThe Total U.S. dollar sales trend of +3.0% lagged Total Produce’s growth trend of +4.7% by -1.7 points
  • South Central (9.1% dollar share) led the Regions with the top dollar sales trend of +5.5%. Northeast holds the largest dollar share (20.7%), but grew only +1.4%. All Regions posted gains
  • Most Markets experienced dollar growth, notably Omaha (+10.3%), Houston (+9.8%) and Chicago (+8.5%)
  • Total U.S. Organic dollar sales grew +32.5%, driven by Great Lakes (+20.2%) which holds a 34.9% share of total Organic dollars
  • Total U.S. mushroom volume in pounds grew +2.4%
  • Six of eight Regions delivered volume growth, led by Midsouth at +5.1%. Plains and South Central were flat
  • Only four of 49 Markets saw downward volume trends, including Sacramento (-4.3%), Buffalo/Rochester (-2.9%) and Milwaukee (-2.5%)
  • Organic volume increased +30.9%, driven by Great Lakes (+20.7%) which holds a 48.6% share of total Organic volume

Segment/Variety – 52 Weeks

  • segment-variety-52wk_brown-growth Total U.S. dollar sales for the White segment were flat, while California (+3.3%) and South Central (+2.4%) posted the only gains. In the Brown segment, dollar sales were up +6.9% in Total U.S.
  • In the Brown segment, seven Regions posted positive trends, of which four Regions were in the double-digits
    • Total U.S. Brown segment dollar trends were driven by Portabella mushrooms, which hold a 32.4% dollar share of Browns and delivered sales growth of +18.0%
  • At the Market level, dollar sales trends in the White segment ranged from an increase of +10.0% in Sacramento to a -4.7% decline in Toledo
  • The Brown segment saw very strong dollar sales gains across 47 of 49 Markets, with Denver leading at +22.2%. Sacramento showed the largest decline of -19.7%
  • Total U.S. volume in pounds of White mushrooms was flat, but growth was seen in Midsouth (+1.5%) and Northeast (+1.3%)
  • Total U.S. volume in pounds of Brown mushrooms grew +8.1%, led by Midsouth with growth of +14.1%
    • Total U.S. Brown segment volume growth trends were driven by Portabella mushrooms which have a 30.7% volume share of Browns and delivered volume growth of +25.9%
  • segment-variety-52wk_charlotteAs with dollars, the Market level volume trends for the White segment were mixed, with 15 Markets trending upward including Charlotte (+12.2%) and Omaha (+8.6%)
  • The volume trend of Brown mushrooms fared better, with only four Markets trending downward. Sacramento (-21.6%) and Buffalo/Rochester (-4.9%) posted the largest losses
    • Strong volume growth in the Brown segment occurred in these Markets: Louisville (+23.8%), Grand Rapids (+20.9) and Nashville (+19.1%)

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