Winston-Salem, NC-based Lowe’s Food Stores Inc. is test-driving a new value-driven retail concept in its home state with the opening of two new Just$ave stores.

Lowe’s evaluated extensive consumer research before coming up with the Just$ave model. The studies showed that consumers are looking for more ways to save money and time and want to support the communities in which they live. Just$ave is designed to address those needs.

J&R Orchards in Chowchilla, CA, packs fresh figs in several different pack styles, according to Chris DeBenedetto, who handles sales for the company.

“We have clamshells, trays, half trays and baskets,” he said. Customers are “increasingly liking the clamshells” which come eight one-pound clams or 12 eight-ounce clams per tray. Compared to other options, the clamshell “looks a lot better. It definitely ships better and stores better.”

J. Marchini Farms in Le Grand, CA, a grower and shipper of figs for both the fresh and dried markets, is also involved in growing a wide assortment of other produce items, many of them specialty products.

Marchini is perhaps best known for its radicchio. It grows not only the “standard” variety which is deep red with white veins, but also the stronger-flavored Radicchio di Treviso and the more mild Castelfranco which is, according to the company’s web site, possibly the mildest of all radicchios.

With fig production currently in the Central Valley and the southern desert of California, Stellar Distributing Inc. in Madera, CA, is in the business of shipping fresh figs from late April or early May through the end of the year and possibly into January.

With imports expected from Peru and Chile next winter, “we will definitely be working with fix next year, year-round,” said Kurt Cappelluti, sales manager.

This year, production in the company’s desert program is expected to be about double what it was in 2010, he said.

“We are excited about the upcoming season. We have additional fruit,” George Kragie, president of Western Fresh Marketing in Madera, CA, said in an interview with The Produce News May 6.

“We are going to start California figs on Monday, May 9,” out of the southern desert, shipping out of Coachella, CA, he said. The variety will be Brown Turkey, and the fruit will be packed “only in half trays and full trays because the fruit is going to be too large” for clamshells or baskets.

REEDLEY, CA — Family Tree Farms Marketing LLC, here is one of just “two or three” California stone fruit shippers with “a full white-flesh program,” Dovey Plain, marketing administrator, said May 6.

“A lot of people are aware that we have been branching out into some yellow [peach and nectarine] varieties and increasing that every year,” she said. “But it is not in any way decreasing our commitment to white flesh” which “still remains … our number one focus.”