Culture Archives - Under the Mango TreeUnder the Mango Tree

#CelebrateMexico #CelebrateMangoes

April 1, 2024

A Cinco de Mayo promotion that celebrates Mexico with mangoes

While Cinco de Mayo may not be a major holiday in Mexico, it has become a significant event in the USA, driving sales of Mexican produce items, including mangoes. We recognize the opportunity this presents for us.

Our #CelebrateMexico #CelebrateMangoes campaign not only excites and entices consumers with all things organic mango, but also educates on the beauty and culture of Mexico. It encourages a celebration of Mexican heritage, including its rich agricultural offerings. Through bold displays of Mexican organic fruits and vegetables, we aim to showcase the value of Mexico’s agricultural richness to consumers.

Culture, Featured, News

Little Ataulfos. Big Opportunity.

January 31, 2024

Offering consumers a side of value along with their #MangoJoy

Our sweet organic Ataulfos are making their way across the USA and into stores. Their natural sugar caramel sweetness, complemented by subtle Mexican spice undertones, is soon to grace the hands of eager Ataulfo aficionados. The potential for sweet culinary creations becomes limitless: from vibrant salsas and fiery hot sauces (Crespo Sinaloa Sauce) to delightful breakfasts, luscious cakes, and decadent desserts. Most will simply eat them and experience the high dose of #MangoJoy that this particular varietal offers, savoring them more so this season onset with the backdrop of the mango-chaos.

We won’t deceive ourselves and overlook the significantly high market prices and their impact on both sales and consumer enthusiasm for mangoes. It’s evident that we are navigating uncharted territory in the realm of mango markets, a situation well-acknowledged by all.

Certainly, I think, we not only have good ideas but also the determination and mango expertise to navigate through the chaos, all with the goal of achieving sweet results for consumers, retailers and our own systems. In these times, it’s crucial for all of us to tap into our creativity, think more openly, and be willing to try new things.

Culture, Featured, News, People

Cultivating #MangoJoy for Profit

September 19, 2023

The ROI of Crespo’s Summer Mango Mania promotion

I know I live in a world that doesn’t register ROI in happiness, let alone recognize the monetary value of #MangoJoy. I am, however, acutely aware that #MangoJoy has value and that when we work together to cultivate it, building comprehensive mango programs that encircle it, everyone (including farmers and farming communities) reap more substantial and sustainable profits, a rather difficult thing to achieve within any organic produce commodity; regardless of if you are a retailer, wholesaler or a grower/packer/shipper like El Grupo Crespo. Our summer mango promotion was designed to do just that. And yes, I’ve got empirical data, retailer, wholesaler and processor testimonials along with loads of intuitive data to prove that our Summer Mango Mania promotion works, delivering profits to retailers, excitement to shoppers and sustainability for our growing program.

Culture, Featured, Kitchen, News, People

#CelebrateMexico #CelebrateMangoes

April 5, 2023

The Cinco de Mayo show goes on, despite supply complexities

A single mango goes a long way: in recipes and in creating #MangoJoy for consumers. Mangoes don’t have to be dirt cheap or in heaping abundance for a consumer to feel the sweet tropical satisfaction and joy that comes from eating and using mangoes.

As I previously reported, Easter is the threshold for volume turnaround. For the most part, that is still the case. The main problem is that the Easter packhouse closings intersect with the lowest volume weeks of fruit. This means the low volume weeks we have experienced are bashing up against less fruit and orchard/packhouse shutdowns for a few days. This means next week (the week after Easter) will be the most difficult week for fruit volume fulfillments industry wide.

Oaxaca and Chiapas are a 3-5 day drive to Nogales & McAllen, and fruit has to be picked, packed, and shipped before anyone can get their hands on it. The math is simple and with an already empty(ish) pipeline and unprecedented demand, we anticipate that it will take a few weeks to fill up. This puts us directly into the Cinco De Mayo push, which means we do not expect a “flush” of product until after Cinco De Mayo. But I say that with caution as the timing puts is directly in the beginning of the transition from the southern regions into the Northern ones with the onset of Nayarit Ataulfos. Continue Reading…

Culture, Featured, Kitchen, News, People

My Equipo’s Recipe for Success

March 22, 2023

Those that feast together grow together

Someone recently claimed that recipes have no place in buyer-focused produce marketing. That someone doesn’t know my history with buyers or recipes nor does that person connect the dots between farms and tables, like I do. That someone has probably never witnessed the excitement over the vibrant consumer mango recipes and educational cards boldy worn by the displays of #MuchosMangoes during Crespo Organic Summer Mango Mania, put there by people like Four Seasons Produce’s merchandiser extraordinaire Brian Dey. That someone has likely never tasted the tantalizing Crespo Organic Sinaloa Sauce recipe, the one that I created to pay homage to the Crespo family’s home state of Sinaloa and the habanero and mango connection. No doubt that someone completely underestimates the power of a good recipe and of food in general.

Food is a connector. When we share food, we get deeper insights into one another. Food builds friendships and mends conflicts. It’s a life necessity and one of the few sensory experiences that we get to share with all other human beings on the planet. Food may just be the most powerful connector there is. It is nourishing and, to partake in it together, nourishes the group. As we bring food into our bodies with others, we become the same. That feeling of sameness relaxes us and creates more openness. Trust, cooperation and growth are born out of openness. A mango recipe shared, seen, cooked, shared again (with consumers) binds us all. I know the power of food and a good recipe.

Culture, Featured, News, Secrets & Lies

Where Is the Spine in International Women’s “Day”?

March 7, 2023

Building bridges: diversity & inclusion

It’s a weird day, this International Woman’s Day thing. It feels important but like we’ve made a very serious topic frivolous by placing it in a “day category”, next to International Ice Cream Day and International Siblings Day. My gut feeling is that this rather uncomfortable topic is placed here between ice cream and siblings because we don’t know what else to do with it. We still don’t know quite how to address real life disparity.

Most search engine results will point browsers to one particular website: InternationalWomensDay.com. As far as I can tell, the site’s origins are untraceable entities except for the fact that John Deer seems to be a sponsor (which feels peculiar and suspicious to me, I won’t lie).

The theme on this site is #EmbraceEquity. Despite this year’s incredibly cheesy (and if you ask me a little too soft for the subject matter) self-hug photographic rendition of the theme, the site manages to capture the most important aspects of equality: diversity and inclusion… “to get the world talking about why equal opportunities aren’t enough.” Citing that: “People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action.”

Culture, Featured, Kitchen

Celebrate, Know and Feel Mexico with Pechuga

December 20, 2022

A celebratory mango-milk punch for Christmas

I had my first Pechuga, about 30 years ago when I was studying politics in Cuernavaca, Mexico while in college. On one of our outings we visited the then governor of the state of Morelos (where Cuernavaca is located) at his home, to discuss local politics. The governor also happened to produce mezcal. It wasn’t long into the outing when we veered off political course and began indulging in the governors mezcalero side, drinking and discussing mezcal instead. Eventually he pulled out a bottle of his pechuga, or as he humorously described it “mezcal’s breast milk.” After the poorly translated jokes, he went on to describe pechuga to us for real, explaining that it’s a very special and celebratory spirit made by mezcal makers and made with raw chicken or turkey breast as well as a medley of other botanicals, herbs and spices.

Wait, what? The room of 19-20 year old Americans were a bit in shock, even my then weird loving idea self, was aghast with the idea of raw chicken breast used in mezcal.

Culture, Featured

Egyptian Mangoes

December 14, 2022

#MuchosMangoes inspire as I sail down the Nile

Egypt has long been on my list of places to visit and recently I was lucky enough to spend fifteen days traveling around the country. Not just to see and feel the ancient history but to experience the rich culture and food that I have grown to love with so many of my travels to the middle east for agricultural work.

On this trip I was lucky enough to see almost all parts of Egypt, from Cairo all the way to the southern border near Sudan. I of course got to see the great pyramids in Giza and ride a camel, and visit the tombs and temples of Pharaohs, queens and goddess’. I also got to sail down the Nile for four days – I guess technically I sailed up since the Nile, the longest river in the world, flows from south to North. I met with women in small villages and got to eat some wonderful food in a Nubian village near Sudan and cook with the chef on the ancient Egyptian sailboat. lI earned a lot about Egypt; the greatest take away is how much and how long the country (its people) have been suffering and how little we westerners hear about that and how important mangoes are there.

Culture, Featured, News, People

Empaque don Jorge (El Original)

May 15, 2022

Boasting the most efficient and modern mango pack house around

Disclaimer: This is a boastful and prideful post about a packing house that I truly believe in. I’m one of a few globally well-traveled industry folks with an extremely diverse make up of commodities, markets, cultures and systems. I have seen a lot of packing houses and “sheds” in my travels and none like this one. Boasting this facility and the Crespo’s is the natural outcome of my true beliefs.

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We don’t talk enough about the quality of packing houses in our business and yet this is the one place that can make or break a program, the place that usually solves and/or causes most problems in terms of product quality, food safety and compliances. Most fruits and vegetables are harvested and then brought to a packing house or shed where they are then packed into various bulk or retail packaging. These large and small sorting/packing hubs serve as the distribution outlet for the farm and/or the farmers. These facilities can be modern, elaborate, high tech, clean and simple, dirty and even bare bones covered (shaded) tables where things like fresh herbs are packed right out of the field.

Culture, Featured, People

Gratitude for Organic Farmers

November 23, 2021

A pause for appreciation for those that feed us, organically

I learned about gratitude as a little girl. It was not taught to me in school or by my parents or by my country. It was taught to me by Nicaraguans. Poor Nicaraguans to be specific, who had nothing much of physical, monetary, or economic value in their possessions. At the time, mid to later 1980’s these average Nicaraguans were struggling to find food and basic necessities amidst embargoes, wars, political power struggles, corruption, CIA involvement, cocaine trafficking and more. My family, my father and four brothers just happened to be living alongside them, in similar circumstances, the struggling to find necessities part. I paid attention then, as I do now and noticed early on that despite having, what I considered, from my viewpoint as a young girl coming from a poor family in Los Angeles, nothing- they were happy. They were generous and above all they had gratitude. It took me a while to understand this formula, but eventually it’s one that is now etched in my bones and part of my blood. A way of being that I couldn’t stop being attracted to. The attraction, to living around those with immense gratitude is what lead me to farmers, small organic farmers to be exact.

Older Posts

Culture

#CelebrateMexico #CelebrateMangoes

A Cinco de Mayo promotion that celebrates Mexico with mangoes

Little Ataulfos. Big Opportunity.

Offering consumers a side of value along with their #MangoJoy

Cultivating #MangoJoy for Profit

The ROI of Crespo’s Summer Mango Mania promotion

#CelebrateMexico #CelebrateMangoes

The Cinco de Mayo show goes on, despite supply complexities

My Equipo’s Recipe for Success

Those that feast together grow together

Where Is the Spine in International Women’s “Day”?

Building bridges: diversity & inclusion

Celebrate, Know and Feel Mexico with Pechuga

A celebratory mango-milk punch for Christmas

Egyptian Mangoes

#MuchosMangoes inspire as I sail down the Nile

Empaque don Jorge (El Original)

Gratitude for Organic Farmers

A pause for appreciation for those that feed us, organically

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