The Center for Growing Talent has announced that the Women’s Catalyst Award given to recognize an individual who has made a significant impact supporting women in the industry will be renamed to honor the late Frieda Rapoport Caplan. The announcement was made during a live broadcast with CGT Executive Director Doug Bohr and Frieda’s Specialty Produce CEO Karen Caplan, Vice President & COO Jackie Caplan Wiggins and Alex Jackson Berkley, director of sales.

For the 2020-21 Northwest pear season, USA Pears is once again going to celebrate National Pizza Month with its pear pizza campaign. This year marks the second time the organization has executed the campaign, which includes a consumer contest on social media, working with restaurants around the United States to highlight their own pear pizza offerings, influencers and bloggers creating and sharing their pear pizza recipes, and retailers posting pear pizza ideas for their shoppers.

Pop Up Grocer, the world’s first-ever traveling pop-up grocery store, will bring its roster of innovative consumer brands to New York this fall for a month-long residency in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Opening Oct. 2 through Nov. 1, Pop Up Grocer will showcase a select group of qualifying brands, vetted by founder Emily Schildt and the Pop Up Grocer team, including Yes! Apples , a women-owned and New York-grown apple brand that is sweetening life one apple.

Mastronardi Produce is igniting the pepper category again with a hot new flavor set to hit store shelves in early 2021. Yowzers!, a red chili pepper that is tipping the SUNSET scales on heat, joins the lineup of unique and flavorful SUNSET pepper products including Shazam! shishito pepper and Kaboom! black jalapenos.

Three years after introducing Simbe Robotics’ autonomous robot Tally to select stores to enhance inventory management, Schnuck Markets Inc.  is launching the technology in an additional 46 stores, leveraging Tally’s real-time data to improve the shopping experiences in 62 locations.

Re Fresh, launched in August by produce industry veterans Doug Fisher and Joe Cimino to reimagine the produce procurement experience, has expanded its team by hiring seven accomplished produce industry professionals.

"Re Fresh was founded with a philosophy to focus on customer service, relationship building and a deep understanding of our customers’ needs. This is accomplished by assembling the right people augmented by technology to carry out our vision," said Cimino. "With these hires, everything is in place to fulfill these goals."