2019 ASHS Annual Conference

The USDA funded the East Coast Broccoli Project in order to diversify the highly concentrated supply of broccoli and establish a scalable supply chain along the East Coast. New varieties have been developed to grow in the East Coast climate and previous research has demonstrated promising consumer demand for locally grown broccoli among East Coast consumers. However, understanding of retail buyer preferences is decidedly limited. This study fills the gap and explores wholesale and retail buyer, broccoli procurement quality requirements, their assessment on local and non-local broccoli, and heterogeneity in preferences among them. An online survey was conducted with twenty-seven buyers along the East Coast covering approximately half of the retail landscape. In the survey, the buyers expressed strong preference for dark green color, small bead size, uniform beads and heads, and short stem length when procuring broccoli. Although they would prefer local broccoli to those from the West Coast, everything else being equal, they demand the same quality for the local broccoli. Therefore, to compete with West Coast broccoli, East Coast growers must first ensure product quality. Natural food resellers were found to be relatively more open to different product conditions and believe that local broccoli could command a price premium. They could be the most approachable buyers for the new broccoli producers and a promising marketing channel to develop the East Coast broccoli industry.

Keywords: broccoli, local food, buyer preferences, logit regression