Berries: Sweeter than Ever

Raspberries and strawberries are sweeter than
ever, and we replenish them 2-3 times per week.

We've been buying berries in order to add more anti-oxidants to our diet. Initially most of them were tart (except for blueberries), and we ate them because they were good for us, not because of their taste.

Over the past year berries of all kinds--not just popular strawberries but "blacks, ras, and blues"-- have become noticeably sweeter. Despite higher prices the market is exploding:

The U.S. berry market is worth about $9 billion annually, which is up more than 40% over the past five years, according to NielsenIQ. Strawberries are the most popular berry, but the entire category is one of the most promising areas of growth in the entire grocery store. In fact, berries now sell twice as much as any other fruit.

Most shoppers buy regular berries. Others splurge on organic berries. But more are now filling their carts with these luxury berries.

If you want to know how to find them, all you have to do is look at the label—yellow for conventional berries and green for the organics. If you spot a clamshell with a Driscoll’s Sweetest Batch sticker, you’re staring at the premium brand, the finest berries of a company that trademarked the phrase “only the finest berries.”

...There is sticker shock in every part of the grocery store these days. But no matter how much they might cost, Americans continue to inhale berries. They’re the rare food that can be eaten for breakfast and for dessert. They’re also more snackable than most food—and most fruit. And they have one of the highest household-penetration rates in the produce aisle, according to NielsenIQ. Jonna Parker, who leads market-research firm Circana’s work on fresh foods, put it this way: “Berries are now ubiquitous.”

Technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, space travel, medicine, and energy capture all the headlines, but advances in agriculture are perhaps the most impactful to our daily lives.