Sailing the Seas of Learning March, 26 2007

Erin, our FruitGuys marketing maven, was cooking dinner last week while her son played at the kitchen table with his Playmobile pirate set. He pumped his men up for battle: "It's gonna be dangerous. You're going to see things you've never seen before." He paused. "It's. . . It's . . . It's going to be Uneducational!"

Avast ye mateys, I'm not sure when my un-educational boy-instinct changed but this week we're trying to board the ship of knowledge. We're looking at how we do things and wondering what kind of things we do well and what kinds of things we need to improve upon. If you are so inclined, we would really appreciate it if you could take a few moments and click through our 16-question customer survey. We'll give free FruitGuys T-shirts to the first 50 respondents who provide their email contact information. If you want to submit an anonymous survey, that's OK too, we just won't be able to send you a T-shirt. And one lucky person will get me to bring lunch for their department (up to ten people). Eye patches and pirate treasure sold separately - AARRGGHH! You can get to our survey at: http://fruitguys.com/survey.shtml

Spring Fruit:
To keep with the pirate theme, we are now entering the doldrums of the fruit seasons. Spring time is the roughest time of the year to find great fruit. The winter citrus is winding down so we begin to lose some of the more interesting varieties. Locally grown apples and pears have now been in cold storage since November and will begin to lose some of their zip. Plus, although people see trees flowering and feel like everything is growing again in the thawing spring weather, the truth is we are still nearly two months away from the first tastes of stone fruits -- peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries, pluots, apriums and more. . . What's a FruitGuy to do? Well, first we dig deeper for treasure, we find those small growers who may have late varieties of citrus that we can enjoy (such as the Pixie tangerines). If the weather cooperates, we'll also start including some organic strawberries in the crates as we edge into April. For customers who order conventional fruit, you may also begin to get apples, pears and grapes that are imported from other regions where they are in season. I encourage everyone to take a look at our website to see our changing mix of fruit. You can check it out at:
www.fruitguys.com/pages/in_the_mix.shtml
Let us know if you have any questions. Email me at chris@fruitguys.com
Enjoy and be fruitful!