In the winter of 2008, at a Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, a customer stands before the fresh fruit, confused. The list of things they don’t understand is growing: Where are the youth sourcing these supremely skinny jeans? Does anyone actually understand Heidegger? And what’s the deal with these grapes—how did these get to Arkansas in December, and is there any hope they’re actually good?
All of these questions are timeless. But there’s one we can answer.
Getting grapes: A brief history
Our imagined customer made an interesting assumption as they stood alone, looking at grapes. It goes something like this: Procuring fresh fruit, when it’s not in season, has to be hard.
And it is. Grapes especially.
“There’s something fundamental about grapes, which really makes them a challenge,” said Javier Hernandez, a director in global produce sourcing with Walmart Sourcing. “They are very complex, because they’re very perishable. And getting them in stores, flavorful and full, 52 weeks a year, that was a massive challenge.”
In produce sourcing, they refer to the times when produce isn’t actively growing as a ‘gap.’ Think of it as a break in coverage, where fruit is out of season, not producing, or massively impacted by some act of nature. And grapes, which are a finnicky little fruit, come with many a gap. The problem then, Javier said, became how to eliminate those gaps. How do we get grapes onto shelves at Walmart, year-round, that are worth eating?
On Jan. 26, 2005, an answer to that question was sought abroad.
Walmart Sourcing opened its first international office in Chile to explore how operating in the country could bolster produce sourcing. That exploration would turn up fertile ground.
“The question was, ‘Okay, where in the world can we go to get grapes,’” said Mark Adamy, a senior director in Walmart Sourcing who leads the grape sourcing team overseas. “Well, Chile had grapes, and they could be sold, and so we started there. But think about what Walmart would mean to a grower in Chile, who can go back to their board and say Walmart was willing to work with them. It opened doors for everyone.”
One of the most climatically diverse countries in the world, traversing everything from desert to temperate rainforests, Chile was already great for grapes. But what it really did was teach Walmart that to fill its gaps, it had to expand its grape-getting horizons.
“Back then, you would finish the season in California, and you would have a gap without grapes for two or three months, and then we would start in the early part of Chile. But these early varieties we were working with there, they weren’t consistent—they could be tart, or acidic—and we always want the best experience for customers,” Javier said. “Working with the merchants, learning from each other, we as a sourcing team said, ‘Okay we’re starting to get somewhere. Now we have the merchant, we have the suppliers in Chile, we can really make this happen.’ And it was this approach that got us into Peru.”
Fast forward. It’s 2025, and Javier is in Arequipa, Peru, where his boots are stirring up light dust with every step down an endless row of red globe grapes. He's joined by his colleague Catherine Pastor, an agronomist whose role with Walmart has taken her to fields around the world.
About 500 miles southeast of Lima, in the foothills of the Andes mountains, Arequipa isn’t particularly easy to get to—but a simple fact eclipses everything else: It’s harvest time. And Javier and Catherine understand that for these grapes to be perfect sitting on the table, they have to be perfect as they’re cut off of the vine. In fact, these grapes begin the journey to consumption in much the same place they end it: a basket.
This is what a commitment to the craft looks like. And it doesn’t end in Arequipa. Let’s rewind again. With a sourcing strategy established, the grape dominos had been set. They just needed a push. That would come in the form of a Walmart-specific realization: We can do what others can’t because we exist where they don’t. And to be the best grocer anywhere, quality has to come first.
Thus the dominos fall.
It starts in California. Peru, then Chile. Back to Peru. Mexico. Slowly, but surely, a line on the map emerged: like the great migration of the wildebeest across Africa in search of water, a picture of Walmart’s commitment to excellence could be drawn across the Americas. Chasing the sun, following the seasons, in pursuit of a perfect grape.
Grape expectations
Gerardo Guerrero is the merchant managing the grapes category for Walmart. He’s been in the role for the last three years and overseen around a 30% growth in Walmart’s market share in grapes.
In typical Walmart fashion, Gerardo is humble. He’s proud of his team, and he talks just a little faster when he’s asked about the modern state of grapes.
“We’ve covered all the gaps,” he says with a smile. “We have 52 weeks availability, with all the options across the year. We’ve reduced our markdowns, and we’re selling—and the customers are buying—the kind of fruit we want to sell.”
The data support his claim.
In 2024, according to internal data, Walmart sold more than 22 million cases of grapes. In the U.S. alone, we’re selling more than 1 million pounds of grapes every day.
And the way the sourcing picture has changed is revealing, too, exhibiting the team’s efforts to increase the surety of Walmart’s supply alongside the quality of the fruit. Between 2019 and 2024, the total volume of grapes imported through our direct import program nearly doubled in size, growing 99.72%. And from 2021 to 2024, our grapes in-stock improved by over 500 basis points. In case you’re not a numbers person, allow me to be clear: these ones are good. They mean Walmart has substantially improved the availability of grapes for its customers in the last four years alone.
To find such success, so much has to work right—and it has to work together. Part of this that may sound simple actually isn’t: relationship building.
“We’ve had everything happen you can imagine. We’ve had strikes, major weather events, political unrest, and through all of that, we’ve been achieving extraordinary results, which is why relationships with suppliers are so critical,” Gerardo said. “When you have these relationships, they’re what protect you when supply is limited. Those relationships are value. With our growers and suppliers, you get a depth of commitment—they value us, we value them, and they do everything in their power to ensure we have the very best grapes.”
As is the case in all strong relationships, communication has to be constant. Knowledge has to be shared, expanded upon, and then leveraged.
“Experience led us to experiment,” Mark said. “About nine years ago, we started using the Innovation Center at the Home Office to go after exotic varieties and niche varieties of grapes: red, green, black, seeded, seedless, and sharing what we learned.”
With data on how to grow a better grape flowing from fields around the world to inboxes in Arkansas, and the information learned in the early days in Chile informing strategy in Peru and beyond, something was becoming clear: The Walmart customer had access to a really, really good grape. Consistently.
“We started chasing the sun for that very reason,” Mark said about quality. “Our whole goal is to deliver on flavor and quality at the price our customers expect. And to give them that greatness year-round. What we have is an amazing team, which does everything it can to get us the best varieties of grapes in the world.”
Under the sun
In the summer of 2025, at a Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, a customer stands before the fresh fruit, confused. The list of things they don’t understand is growing: Where are the youth sourcing these giant jeans? Does anyone actually understand Heidegger? And what’s the deal with these grapes—why are there so many kinds, and how did they actually get here? And why do they look SO good?
All of these questions are timeless. But there’s one we can answer.
