The United Fresh Foundation, through the Center for Leadership Excellence, is now accepting nominations for the 2013 Retail Produce Manager Awards program.

Established in 2005 by founding sponsor Ready Pac Foods Inc., the program will honor 25 outstanding retail produce managers at the United Fresh 2013 convention May 14-16 in San Diego.

Citing excellent response to the USA Onions' tailgate promotion on Facebook, Sherise Jones, marketing director for the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee, said in mid-November that cookbooks are being sent out at a rate of one a day.

The 375-page "Time to Grill" cookbooks showcase recipes from Weber-Stephen, the makers of Weber grills and grill products.

And in addition to covering virtually every menu segment, the recipes prominently feature onions, which put the jumbo Spanish Sweets from Idaho-Eastern Oregon in the spotlight.

CHEP, a leading provider of managed pallet pooling solutions, announced a new contract for shipping platform solutions with Del Monte Fresh Produce, one of the nation’s larger marketers and distributors of high-quality fresh and fresh-cut fruit and vegetables.

In an effort to come up with more appetizing fruit and vegetable dishes for kids, the Produce Marketing Association held a Sensory Experience Contest at its most recent convention.

As sweet potatoes begin to appear in holiday spreads and sweet potato lovers nationwide are preparing for the ninth annual Sweet Rewards Recipe Contest, the Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission is launching a new creative advertising plan to promote Louisiana sweet potatoes.

The 2012 harvest of Medjool dates in the Bard Valley of California is “significantly larger than last year, which was larger than the year before, so this growth curve we are on continues,” said David Anderson, marketing director for the Bard Valley Medjool Date Growers Association in Bard, CA, in an interview with The Produce News.