The one- and two-pound bags of mini sweet peppers have become a main stream item at many supermarkets helping to grow the category and increase sales.

At least this is the view of Mike Aiton, marketing manager at Prime Time Sales Inc., which is located in Coachella, CA, and is one of the nation’s premier growers of sweet peppers.

He said sales of this relatively new item probably cannibalize traditional bell pepper sales for some consumers, but overall they represent a boost in sales for the pepper category, which has been on a growth curve for at least a decade.

Several factors, including great weather, an improved cultural system, increased marketing opportunities and an early crop, have George Tudor very optimistic about this year’s Coachella Valley grape season.

“The weather has been very steady. Since January, it has not been overly hot and we haven’t had any cold weather,” he said. “On average it has been about 5-10 degrees warmer every day.”

They plan for it for a year and then the season is over almost before it starts. But for Tony Bianco and Blaine Carian, two third-generation Coachella Valley grape growers and marketers, that’s how they planned it when they started Desert Fresh in 1993.

Bianco, who serves as the company’s president and handles the marketing of the crop grown mostly by his partner, said it is a “fast and furious” season. “We try to get in and out in about six weeks,” he said.

In 2000, Nick Bozick, the president of Richard Bagdasarian Inc., based in Mecca, CA, and his Vice President of Marketing, Franz DeKlotz, launched Pasha Marketing as a vegetable entity to complement their grape and citrus lines.

“It continues to be a profitable business,” said DeKlotz in mid-April as the company was launching its 15th year and 30th season in the vegetable growing and shipping business. “We have two distinct seasons (each year),” said DeKlotz.

The three professions listed in the headline above may not seem as if they are related, but they were the path Steve Root, president of East West Unlimited LLC, in Coachella, CA, took to his current perch as a grower-shipper of table grapes in California’s Coachella Valley.

Root grew up in the valley in Indio, CA, and went to high school at Coachella Valley High School. He excelled at football, which led to a spot on the roster at the University of Alabama where he played linebacker under the legendary Bear Bryant.

Wegmans Food Markets Inc. confirmed that the family-owned supermarket chain plans to build two stores in the suburbs of Richmond, VA. The stores will be similar in size and design to Wegmans’ current Virginia stores, which range in size from 120,000 to 140,000 square feet.