34 



1916 ANNUAL REPORT 



disappointed in the way it was served. It seemed as though there was a 

 lack of knowledge as to the proper way to prepare the fruit. 



You have two cities in California, — Los Angeles and San Francisco — 

 and as I see it, it would be an object for you to begin a comprehensive 

 distribution of your products here under your own supervision. We have 

 found many problems in our citrus marketing that we are now undertak- 

 ing to solve by what we call "trade development work," or dealers' service 

 work. This work has been done very largely in the East. We only know from 

 our reports and the general effects on our business what the results are. This 

 is a class of work, it seems to me, that would be of great advantage in 

 your business. It works not only with the hotels and restaurants, but with 

 the retailers, with the jobbers, who would handle your product, keeping 

 them all advised of the proper method of keeping the avocado until 

 ii is sold and consumed; of preparing it in the various ways it can be 

 used; of its advantage in the diet: — in fact an advertising idea carried 

 out by demonstration such as you have all seen many, many times. 



We have in our citrus problem something you may or may not have 

 here. I think I can be frank because I don't know anything about avo- 

 cados. You should standardize your varieties, just insofar as you can. 

 You must be careful you do not get into your commercial varieties types 

 that may be of temporary benefit to the producer, but may be of lasting 

 injury to the industry. We have in the citrus game certain types of fruit 

 that have an appearance that leads to their selling, at certain times, at 

 higher prices than the standard varieties, but these fruits it has been 

 proven are a menace to the standing of our fruit with the consumer, and 

 it is the consumer you have to satisfy. 



You may have a co-operative organization of your producers and 

 may co-operate in your marketing, but you must carry that co-operation 

 down to the people who handle your product and the people who eat it. 

 You take their money to pay you for your effort. 



We have found in our business at various times that certain varieties 

 or types of fruit, that were satisfactory from an exterior appearance, did 

 not have the eating quality, the satisfactory amount of juice, and the 

 flavor, to build up an appetite for oranges, and we have had reports from 

 certain markets at different times that indicate that the sale of such 

 fruit has seriously affected the demand for more fruit. It would seem 

 desirable to me, if you standardize your product, that you should adopt 

 something in the nature of a brand, which would stand for your Avocado 

 Association, and which would mean a certain thing to the consumer. 



I am not "talking shop" at all, or boosting our own organization, but 

 the greatest thing the California Fruit Growers' Exchange did was to 

 adopt the word "Sunkist" on the best grades. I believe the benefit of the 

 word "Sunkist" has been decidedly cumulative. It has been worth more 

 to us every year than the preceding year. I believe if your Association is 

 m such form that you can get together on something of this kind in the 

 beginning, you will find the benefit cumulative as you go on. 



I was talking to a jobber the other day about avocados. I asked him 

 what he knew about them. "Well," he said, "I don't know much about 

 them except in Chicago they used to ship them from Florida — great big 



