This little grape went to market
This little grape made wine
This little grape got freeze-dried
Now he’s a grape divine.
Okay, it’s not my best poetry.* But the point is that freeze dried grapes, at least if they are SuperHero grapes from Union Grove Farm, are really fine grapes, nutritious (and we’ve got the science to prove it) and delicious (a subjective measure, I admit, but just try them and see if you don’t agree.)
But in order for people to try them, they have to, like the first little grape, get to market.
By publicizing them here in the Little House column, I am contributing to the marketing of SuperHero grapes, but let’s face it, not nearly enough. Nope, it’s going to take more than that.
Now, back in the day, which for me was admittedly a very long time ago, I actually knew something about marketing. But pretty much everything has changed since then. So in order to write about the marketing of SuperHero grapes, I had to do some research.
Oh, no! Not that!
‘Fraid so.
Today’s marketers use terms like “social media” and “influencers.”
Back in the day, we thought “social media” had something to do with parties at which ice cream was served. And “influencers” was a misspelling of influenza. In the words of Jay Sliverheels, from an even earlier day, “Not any more, Kemo Sabe.”
Fortunately for me, I happen to know the person in charge of Marketing for SuperHero grapes. Her name is Madelyn Petrie, and she also happens to owe me a favor, because I am personally responsible for fully one fourth of her DNA, being her grandfather.
So, I arranged to meet with her and find out what gives with regard to SuperHero grapes.
It seems to me that there are four reasons why people might purchase a package of SuperHero grapes. To wit, they are:
1. Available. Friends have been bugging me for a couple of years now: “When can I get some grapes?” they ask. And all this time, I’ve had to hang my head and sheepishly reply, “Soon.” Well, no more. As of today, those little piggies have gone to market! The 2026 harvest and freeze-drying season is underway. Just visit www.superHerograpes.com and place your order.
2. Delicious. Madelyn told me she was in an airport recently and saw some freeze-dried fruits for sale, so she bought a package of apples. “They tasted terrible,” she said. SuperHeroes are way, way, way better tasting than most of the freeze-dried fruit now on the market, she believes, and I agree, having done some taste-testing research of my own, something I’m uncharacteristically good at. So here’s my Little House Guarantee If you try SuperHero grapes, and don’t think they taste good, send me an email and I’ll send you a package of some other stupid brand of freeze-dried apples and you can try them instead. . (I reserve the right to also publish your name in a future column on what I am sure will be a very short list of people with no taste.)
3. Nutritious. In a recent column, I published a chart of High Density Nutrient foods created by an outfit called Health Central and noted that grapes were not pictured. “We intend to change that,” Madelyn said. Indeed. But the truth is, ordinary grapes are not high density nutrient foods. SuperHero freeze-dried grapes, however are. Nutrient by nutrient they contain several time the amount of various nutrients when compared to the green grapes you buy in those plastic bags in the produce section of your local supermarket:: About 8.6x higher than Phenolics, 6.4x higher in Antioxidants, a whopping 24x higher in Flavan-3-Ols and even whoppinger 198x higher in Stilbenes. a class of plant compounds that includes resveratrol, commonly associated with grapes and healthy aging. Well, I’m for that! And so on, through all the other important healthy stuff with names you never heard of, including Flavanones, Flavonols, Anthocyanins, Stilbenes, etc, etc.
Man, it’s a lot of work to type all those big words. I think I need another helping of SuperHero grapes to keep my strength up. But wait, there’s more. Our grapes are also:
4. Grown in an environmentally responsible way. Now, let me be frank here. Some people don’t give a fig if their grapes (or figs, for that matter) are grown in an environmentally responsible way. They only care about #’s1-3 above, and some don’t even care about #3. But it just happens that quite a lot of the people who are in our target cohort – there’s a marketing term right there -- DO care about environmental responsibility, and I certainly hope you are among them. They are appreciative of all the extra work the Union Grove team has done to achieve its official Tier 5 Regenified(T) Agriculture standing, the only vineyard in the US of A that has. These things are tested in an official laboratory at Utah State University, and UGF got the Gold Star.
Okay, there’s the message we want to market. Back in the old days, we’d just produce some ads – TV, radio, print, billboards, direct mail, whatever, supplement with a few news releases and other press relations stuff and collect our consulting fee.
Union Grove Farm will do some of those things, too, But the key in the mid 2020’s marketing is the social media, which is to say, all that stuff that happens on your computer.
Take the influencer thing. Madelyn told me that some of these influencer people have email lists with a million names on them. And these aren’t just random names – they’re people who have chosen to read the stuff their own tame influencer sends them. So if that guy or gal posts a message on Instagram or Tik-Tok that says, “Hey, I tried some of those new freeze-dried SuperHero grapes today, and they’re really yummy, And, they’re super-nutritious, too. I checked the numbers. And they’re grown in North Carolina on an environmentally-friendly certified Regenified vineyard. So I’m going to put some in Justin and Chloe’s lunch boxes, see how they go over. superHerograpes.com.”
See how it works? UGF’s been trolling for tame influencers for a few months now, with good success.
Beyond the influencer world, you’ve got these things called e-commerce sites. The best-known one is Shopify, They take your message and iterate it into all different kinds of media, from giant scoreboards at ballparks to those ads you see now on the streaming channels before the movie starts. I learned all this, and much more, from Madelyn. Smart, these kids.
When I started making commercials back in the seventies, I had to bring along a videographer with a $40,000 camera (1970’s money, mind you) to get my shots. Now you can do it on a cellphone.
All this stuff is so interesting I’m thinking about quitting my whining about how the world is going to hell and start enjoying the ride.
