Produce is the dept where the rest of the store is won or lost.

It's the #1 traffic-driver on the way in and the #1 shrink department on the way out. Customers form their freshness opinion of your entire chain inside the first 30 feet.

And the operating environment keeps getting harder. Weather swings, ad-cycle volatility, ripening curves, weight-variable items, supplier substitutions — all of it landing on a produce manager working off a printout at 5am.

The chains pulling away in produce right now have stopped trying to brute-force the math by hand.