TREE-RIPE FRUIT STARS IN SUMMER PROMOTION

ROSEANNE HARPER

SEATTLE -- Queen Anne Thriftway and Admiral Thriftway Stores here are celebrating "the perfect peach" this week and expect to sell tons of the signature fruit.

The peaches, which just got their send-off, are grown, harvested and handled to the retailer's specifications, said Rich Zegil, produce specialist for the three-unit independent.

"As a result, they're like the peaches we used to eat when we were kids. Juicy and sweet. Like none you can get anywhere else nowadays. We feature them in a six-week-long promotion we call Peach-O-Rama. The whole store gets into it. Everybody's wearing buttons and we have people showing customers how to make peach pies and other stuff."

It's an exclusive agreement with two handpicked growers, one in eastern Washington and one in California, that has made Peach-O-Rama possible, Zegil said. The peaches are picked just at the right time, when their sugar level has peaked, and they're handled with extra care all the way through.

"It costs a lot more that way but we get a great peach and our customers appreciate it. Last year, in the six weeks, we sold 140,000 pounds of them between the three stores, and our stores are pretty small."

At a retail price of $2.29 a pound, and $3.69 for the organic variety, the company doesn't make a big profit because it has to pay 20% to 25% more for the fruit than it would anywhere else.

"But we don't try to make a million. We use them as a bring-in promotion. We want people to come into the store and to look forward to this every year," Zegil explained.

This, the company's fifth annual peach event, was launched with a press conference at the Queen Anne Thriftway store in downtown Seattle last Wednesday.

A huge 30-foot banner strung across the front of each store proclaims, "5th Annual Peach-O-Rama." Mass displays are built just inside and guest chefs at kiosks turn out peach pies and other peach items and show customers how to make them.

Christina Keff who owns two of Seattle's well-known restaurants -- Fandango's and The Flying Fish -- will be there. So will Brian Poor, a well-recognized chef who has a cooking program on local radio. And all day long for six weeks, associates will demo the peaches at the display.

This hoopla all started about six years ago, Zegil said, when one of the company's owners remarked, "Remember the peaches we used to eat when we were kids? Where'd they go? Why doesn't anybody have them?"

"We figured there must be a way to get such a peach," Zegil said.

And that spurred an expedition to find growers who could, and would, produce such a fruit.

"They use a refractometer, an instrument we provide them with to measure the sugar content. Then we keep checking with them to see what's happening. They don't just talk in terms of 'ripe' or 'sweet.' They tell us the fruit is now at such and such a percentage of sugar. And when it's right, we tell them to start picking," Zegil said.