Had a great visit with Richard McKellogg at Lowes Food LLC.  Dick is a big supporter of our fruit and promotes NW Cherries with the best of them.  He said he figures he has 10 weeks to sell the #1 summer time fruit during the summer.  During this time he said they provided his department with at least $1,000,000 in produce department sales.  He said that if the fruit was 2 weeks late, he would just tack on those weeks to the end of the season.  His concern is not with the lateness, but if something comes and hurts the crop where he would not have NW Cherries to sell.  We wrote a circular ad program for him which he intends to support and another program where we will provide funding for a display contest in his 85 store chain.  He mentioned that the 85 stores were down from their high of 115 stores,.  However he said that these stores were generating more sales than when they had the larger number of stores.  The stores they closed were smaller rural type stores and the stores they have now and those they are remodeling and building are much bigger.  They are expanding from some of the rural areas into bigger markets such as Charleston SC, Greenville SC  and Spartanburg SC.  I visited one of his stores in Winston Salem after our visit.  The store was huge--85,000 sq feet.  It was clean and immaculate.  Although it was not a new store it looked like Grand opening.  The produce was fresh and well stocked.  It could compete with any other store in the country.  Very impressive.