The Fruit Growers News - February 2001


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Orchard Hits the Heights with Honeycrisp


By Lee Dean Managing Editor


Running with the pack isn’t Dennis Courtier’s style. After purchasing Pepin Heights Orchard in Lake City, Minn. from his parents 22 years ago, he decided the business had to be more than an apple orchard and roadside stand on the banks of the Mississippi River. “I have a different vision of the marketplace,” says Courtier, who readily admits that the business and marketing models he admires the most are outside the apple industry. That different vision has resulted in the largest orchard in Minnesota, a vertically oriented fruit growing and marketing business featuring the premium Honeycrisp variety along with sparkling apple juice, cider and other apple-related products. The vision is driven by Courtier’s governing business principle: think quality instead of quantity. “We are almost completely quantitatively driven. But 10-year-olds who eat apples couldn’t care less about this,” said Courtier. “We don’t care to be the biggest in the world. We grow specialized varieties of high culinary quality so that those 10-year-old kids will like what they eat.” As Courtier and other growers in the Upper Midwest wrestle with what varieties to grow and sell, one factor reigns supreme - climate. The temperatures can get so cold in Minnesota and Wisconsin that they determine what cultivars can grow at all there. This factor gave birth to the University of Minnesota breeding program that has produced cold-hardy regional favorites such as Haralson, Fireside, Regent and the new darling of the marketplace, Honeycrisp. This variety, a result of a Minnesota crossing of Macoun and Honeygold, was selected in 1974 and released in 1991. Courtier estimates there are 600,000-700,000 Honeycrisp trees in the ground in North America based on royalties paid. The tree grows best in regions where top-notch McIntosh are grown, and does better under cooler conditions. The harvest window for Honeycrisp is an important issue. The textbook placement of harvest date is five days after McIntosh, but the apples can be taken 10 days either side of that date. Courtier sees a two-week harvest window at Pepin Heights, but he is seeking a more objective measure to test maturity. If fruit is picked too early, it can scald in storage; if too late, the apples develop an off flavor. “It has more than its share of problems in the orchard,” said Courtier of Honeycrisp. “But we are slowly learning to cope with the variety’s unusual problems and characteristics. We didn’t get serious about it until five or six years ago. Now every year, we stick in more Honeycrisp.” Pepin Heights has a large part of the Honeycrisp market, especially in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The market focus for the fruit, sold under the Pepin Heights label, is the “Buffalo Commons” area that runs east to west from the Mississippi River to the peak of the Rockies and north to south from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. The popularity of Honeycrisp is increasing. Consumers who sample it almost always make a purchase. However, the variety’s growing complexities will limit the area in which it can be grown. In short, it is not likely to be the next Red Delicious, and that’s just fine with Courtier. “For growers who produce it well, there is a profit opportunity. We think we’re ideally suited to be a primary marketer of the variety,” he explained. “But our biggest fear is that a bunch of people will plant it as a ‘life raft’ and all that fruit will enter the market, much of it being low quality.” Courtier addresses this issue with the Pepin Heights marketing philosophy already mentioned. Honeycrisp and the other specialty varieties are marketed early and vigorously. Courtier and the orchard’s other sales people are on the road often to let store buyers know what the apples look like and taste like. The Pepin Heights program works to keep returns to growers lucrative, store traffic high and to have enough fruit to create a position for Honeycrisp in the produce department. “We have to show the retailers our approach equals more money for them,” said Courtier. “It’s not about what’s cheap. It’s about turns. We help our business partners through turns.” To illustrate the point, Courtier cited a marketing study that profiled the buying habits of housewives who purchased three-pound bags of apples. She does not come back for more apples until that bag is gone. Under the best circumstances and with high quality fruit, that was about five days later with all the fruit consumed. In many other cases with poorer quality fruit, disposition of the bag takes three weeks or longer and often involves throwing away rotting apples. A higher quality apple sold in bulk shortens the time it takes for a display of apples to completely turn over (thus the phrase “turn”). Selling apples this way means that Pepin Heights never takes its eyes off the people who are actually consuming the fruit, says Courtier. “We are subject to the same business issues everybody else is, but we have a different business equation. We have no interest in participating in a ‘reverse auction.’ That’s especially true with Honeycrisp, which is not a variety where we can do with it what we’ve done before. So if we approach the sales end of this seriously and grow it on a large enough scale to be an influence on the grocery industry, we can be a viable player,” Courtier explained. Honeycrisp helps Pepin Heights accomplish another important retail goal, that of carving out a difference. This means coming up with truly new varieties (“not an Empire as a newer Mac,” says Courtier), and marketing them in a different fashion than apples are normally marketed. Pepin Heights is set up to duplicate the Honeycrisp story in the future because of an aggressive research and development program. “We’re cooperating with people all over the world on this. I think there are all kinds of niche markets that are underdeveloped, such as heirloom varieties and crab apples,” said Courtier. Gil and Evelyn Courtier started Pepin Heights Orchards 50 years ago. They were searching for the proper site to grow cold-hardy fruit trees and found it atop the bluffs of Lake Pepin, which is part of the Mississippi River a little over an hour’s drive southeast of the Twin Cities. The combination of the soils the 25-mile long lake and the height of the bluffs create a microclimate suitable for growing apples.