Blue Diamond Growers Innovates Almond Products

By Patrick Cavanaugh, with the Ag Information Network

Mark Jansen is president and CEO of Blue Diamond Growers. And they sure innovate.

“About five years ago, we opened the world’s first almond innovation center. We have a number of R&D and research and marketing people who are housed together on our campus in Sacramento, whose job is to come up with innovations, you know, utilize almonds in new and better ways. And those efforts have absolutely paid off and a year before COVID we launched our record number of new products,” said Jansen.

Jansen said during the COVID crisis, grocery stores didn’t want to innovate. The stores just wanted to keep things simple, only keep the basics on the shelves.

“The stores did not want to see anything new, they just want to make sure they have products in stock. Now, as we come out of COVID, we fully anticipate that people’s desire for seeing something new for new taste experiences, for variety, will come back with a passion,” Jansen said.

“And so, we’ve been innovating all through the pandemic and our teams have found innovative ways to do that. We’ve got a great pipeline of new product ideas that I would love to be able to share with your listeners, but I’m only able to share those such as the extreme almonds that are showing up soon,” he said. Jansen is referring to a hot and spicy line of almonds. “It becomes a competitive intelligence issue for us,” he said.