Best known for its fresh fruit baskets inspired by floral arrangements, Edible Arrangements, which now goes by Edible, is one of the few brands that can elicit strong emotions.
Case in point: In a scene on the Netflix show "The Fall Of The House Of Usher,” the protagonist, played by Kate Siegel, tells her assistant, "Everybody knows that Edible Arrangements are what you send to people you hate."
Edible Arrangements saw this as a marketing opportunity, ripe for the taking, sending Siegel an arrangement with a card that read, “No hard feelings…Sending this to you because we love you.” To which Siegel responded in an Instagram post, “Low-key brilliant.”
“I’ve been in interviews or [where] someone will say Edible Arrangements is a granny brand,” Somia Farid, Edible’s president, tells Fortune’s Executive Exchange in a joint interview with her father and Edible founder–CEO Tariq Farid. “I think that just fuels the fire even more to change the brand perception and make it more modern and elevated.”
Still, they aren’t fully shying away from it either. “I love granny brands,” Tariq says humorously.
But as the company expands its digital footprint, the father-daughter duo acknowledges that stagnation is not an option for the 24-year-old brand, which is jostling to win over a new generation of millennial and Gen Z customers.
Women over the age of 35 make up a sizable portion of Edible's customer demographic, though Somia says it’s become increasingly younger. Certain holidays, however, like Valentine’s Day, skew heavily male.
Like most e-commerce sites, the retailer, which still has over 1,300 physical stores worldwide, is leveraging the power of data to target a broader consumer population in a more customized way. “We're able to do a lot of segmentation and create messaging that's specific to each audience,” Somia says. “It’s pretty dynamic.”
She adds that gaining traction with Gen Z customers, in particular, will require an increased focus on purpose. “They want to shop with brands that are impactful.”
Edible is projected to rake in over $500 million in sales by the end of 2023, Tariq says, but at a time when younger generations are feeling their wallets getting squeezed, how will Edible entice them to buy “overpriced fruit?”
Somia says the company is working diligently to change the perception that Edible is unaffordable. Upon taking over the company’s e-commerce team in 2019, she launched a new category for gifts under $50. That year, purchases from Gen Z customers doubled, she says. “I think that's something we're going to continue with, especially in times when discretionary income is limited because, in the end, it's really important for us to be an approachable brand.”
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