Across the U.S., seasonal and regional sweet onion varieties are available throughout the year, which means retailers have a unique opportunity to keep onion displays, and associated messages, fresh and new. Highlighting each onions’ characteristics as well as the growers’ story is a way for retailers to do that, and to connect with consumers. 

Peri & Sons Farms’ Sweetie Sweet onions come into play annually from July through December. New packages this year are designed to engage consumers with free recipes and healthy lifestyle information. Peri & Sons also offers retailers a variety of eye-catching POS options such as signage, DRCs and bins upon request.  

It’s widely reported that millennials, dubbed the most information-hungry generation, are keenly interested in knowing where and how their food is grown. “Highlighting the farm and growing location of whatever sweet onion is on display, is a good way for retailers to capture the attention of this growing consumer segment,” said Teri Gibson, director of marketing for Peri & Sons Farms in Yerington, NV. “Consumers are looking for a connection, so we try to provide that with engaging information and mobile-friendly QR Codes linking to more information about our farm’s culture and philosophy, our sustainable farming practices, farm videos and creative ways to cook up onions.

“Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see a new recipe that calls for sweet onions, which attests to their growing popularity," said Gibson.

With family-farming roots that date back to 1902, David Peri began thinking about growing onions when he was only 18 years old. Since 1979, when he started Peri & Sons Farms, he has been passionately farming a wide variety of onions. In 2003, after years of research and development, the farm introduced Sweetie Sweet, its proprietary sweet onion, to the market.

Peri & Sons produces and controls the Sweetie Sweet seed supply to maintain optimal quality and integrity year after year. “During each growing season we analyze every field, using an advanced GPS mapping system, to target the best quality bulbs for our proprietary seed-production process," said Gibson. “These special bulbs are nurtured and monitored until they are ready to produce our Sweetie seed. We make the extra effort to grow our own seed to ensure our Sweetie Sweet onions have a consistent flavor and quality profile that our customer look for.”

With the variety of sweet onions available to retailers throughout the year, keeping consumers interested in the product is key.  “No one variety of sweet onion is ‘best’ in terms of shape or flavor; each variety offers a unique consumer experience which means the category has a unique opportunity to refresh the merchandising and messaging every few months throughout the year,” said Gibson.

New season, new onions, new story. The sweet onion category can stay fresh all year long.