Supervalu has the luxury of choice. It operates multiple banners in just about every state in the country. The stores are diverse and many have been allowed to retain unique features that local shoppers appreciate. With this structure, the company can cherry-pick profitable elements in any one of its retail subsidiaries, tinker with it a bit, and then make it available to all of its stores.

That’s just what executives did when they announced the rollout this week of Wild Harvest, a “new” line of natural and organic foods. The private label actually has an interesting pedigree. It was created by Star Markets, a Boston-area chain that operated 53 conventional and four natural foods stores called — you guessed it — Wild Harvest. British supermarket group J. Sainsbury acquired Star in 1998, took the Wild Harvest brand and created products and in-store boutique sections for its other U.S. holding, Shaw’s Supermarkets.

The photo at right depicts one of those in-store sections. The departments consisted of about 4,000 SKUs of national brand and Wild Harvest-brand packaged food including soy milk, rice, soups, sauces, fat-free crackers and spring water as well as dairy, meat and frozen case items. Judging by the hair, I’d guess this photo was taken very soon after the Star acquisition (for her sake, I hope it was).

Then Shaw’s/Star got bought by Albertsons, which used the Wild Harvest to rebrand and launch its own line of all-natural Angus ground beef in 2005.

In 2006, Albertsons was gobbled up by Supervalu. Through it all, Wild Harvest avoided the ax and today is sitting pretty as a nationwide store brand. And now that Supervalu has shuttered its stand-alone Sunflower Markets stores, it’ll be interesting to watch how the company takes what it learned there, and applies it to this time-tested, established natural and organic private label.

We love to talk about a good opportunity when we see one. There are a lot out there, for sure, but one in particular strikes us as a confluence of several disparate trends right now, including gourmet, fair trade, and this whole local movement we’re pretty fond of.

Care to sample some single origin?

A number of coffee, tea and chocolate companies, which rely on ingredients from exotic, far-flung locales like Sumatra, Kenya and Indonesia, have profited from single sourcing for the past several years. Rather than blend ingredients from around the globe, as so many brands did and still do, they’re capitalizing on the gourmet angle of the business by dividing sourcing into single countries or regions. The resulting product also has an identity and a mission, namely to support foreign farmers.

Now single sourcing is moving into the mainstream, and companies are promoting not just the source of the product, but the terroir, or taste profile associated with the area. Green Mountain Coffee, for example, provides information about the different countries that grow their new line of single origin brews and their different taste characteristics. From African countries you get citrus notes, while Indonesian beans provide a more smooth, earthy flavor.

“One of the most interesting aspects of coffee is how the tastes vary from region to region,” says Susan Cote, wholesale marketing director for Green Mountain.

Indeed. Companies are also expanding into new categories. Frontier Natural Co-op, for one, just came out with a line of single origin vanilla beans.

Judging by the numbers, it’s no wonder manufacturers are jumping in. Sales of origin-specific coffees are up 17% over the past year, according to Information Resources. And fair trade goods (which fall right in line with single origin) are increasing more than 40% a year, data from global co-op Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International shows.

With the economy in the dumps, who couldn’t use a little Sumatra these days?

To be sure, the era of “one size fits all” in the beverage industry is long gone. Some recent product introductions aren’t even liquid. They’re energy-promoting mixes and tablets.

Among the newcomers: Jones Soda is in Whole Foods Market stores with 24c, a line of vitamin-enhanced powder drink mixes. Veteran mix companies are also present: 4C has introduced Totally Light 2Go Vitamin Stix; and Kraft’s Crystal Light has added three new varieties to its On The Go Enhanced line introduced last year.

“Traditionally people would buy powdered beverages for their value over ready-to-drink, because they provided the consumer with more beverage on a per-ounce basis at a much lower cost,” said Gary Hemphill, managing director of Beverage Marketing Corp., a New York-based consulting firm.

You know what? He right! It’s just not childhood without summers guzzling Kool-Aid and ice tea mixes. That’s why parents hate rainy days. All that sugar and nowhere to run it off…

Now, health and wellness is the single most important driver in terms of beverage choice. All these products share a functional aspect, and they also emphasize their convenience and portability. The tubes, tablets and powders are all designed to be carried in a pocket or knapsack until needed, and then added to bottled water.

What’s timely is that, given the ongoing debate over plastic bottle waste, the powder sachets reduce the need to repeatedly purchase ready-to-drink performance beverages, and therefore, reduce bottle trash. Pretty neat.

Well, sure. But maybe not for long, judging by what we’re seeing lately with this wily economy.

Right now the price of conventional milk is higher than it’s been in years, at around $20 per hundred weight, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Compare that to this same time last year, when the payout was just over $13 per hundred weight. This is great news for a lot of farmers.

The benefits don’t extend to organic dairy, though. And the current situation has the potential to sour organic milk supplies in the not-too-distant future. Industry experts say that, with conventional prices this high, fewer and fewer farmers want to undertake the onerous three-year conversion process required to get herds certified organic by the Department of Agriculture. To many, it’s just not worth the headache.

Ed Maltby, executive director of the Northeast Dairy Producers Alliance, says the problem is actually twofold: Conventional prices are too high, and organic prices are too low. He estimates that organic milk payouts in the northeast average $28 per hundred weight right now.

As a result, organic supply is stagnant.

“There’s nobody out there looking to transition,” said Maltby, in an interview. “And there won’t be until the price goes up or, alternatively, the conventional price drops back to where it was a year ago.”

Farmers who have made the conversion are being hit hard with the lower organic prices, he added. Many have had to run through lines of credit or dip into their savings to purchase supplies (including expensive organic feed, which is also affected as grain farmers decide to raise in-demand, ethanol crops). They’ve started working longer hours and are trying to grow their own forage to save costs.

Maltby and others have appealed to manufacturers like organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm to raise prices. And companies have responded — though not to the extent that many organic dairy farmers would like to see.

A supply shortage hasn’t hit supermarkets yet. But it very well could by as early as fall. Retailers should take note of Maltby’s warning: “I think by September or October there will be signs up in grocery stores saying that there’s a shortage of organic milk,” he said.

We received some interesting numbers this week from the Food Marketing Institute, the organization representing retailers in food industry matters. The group’s annual study on store development shows a strong trend towards operators embracing sustainability in their building and remodeling plans.

The report, Facts About Store Development 2007, shows that upwards of 34% of the respondents stated they’re pursuing sustainability initiatives related to new buildings or remodels, while another 40% plan to do so in the next five years. A lot of the focus right now seems to be on reducing the store’s environmental impact by adding refrigeration management programs and “making changes in store design, landscaping or transportation,” according to FMI.

As you can imagine, right now, the emphasis is on energy conservation and reduction. Retailers have joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill program like crazy in an effort to minimize leaks in refrigeration systems. They’re decreasing energy use with LED lighting, skylights, light-motion detectors and energy-efficient HVAC systems. Some of them are going so far as to install systems that reclaim heat output, and adjusting schedules in an effort to drive energy use to off-peak hours.

Customers might not see all the effort that’s going on behind the scenes. But they should be told. Retailers should be sure to publicize their efforts, using bag stuffers, in-store signage or an article in their custom publication.

April is finally here, and I’m thinking ahead to sunshine, hiking and baseball season. As a business reporter covering whole health issues, I’m also thinking about Earth Day.

This year, it’s no wonder. Whole Foods announced back in January its plans to do away with plastic bags on April 22. Doing this gave them a lot of good press and put them ahead of other retailers on the issue — many of whom have crafted their own Earth Day promotions.

In terms of sheer size and focus, however, the award has to go to Wal-Mart. Yesterday the Bentonville retailer announced plans to offer a host of sustainable products at reduced prices for not just one day, but the entire month of April. Calling it their “Earth Month” promotion, Wal-Mart officials have positioned the campaign as a way to bring green into the mainstream, so to speak.

Part of the plan involves introducing new items like 20-pound bags of recyclable rubber mulch, $7.50 T-shirts made from recycled plastic bottles, as well as cotton T-shirts whose proceeds benefit transitioning organic farmers. It also involves cutting prices on items already in stores, like Clorox Green Works detergent, as well as introducing a new line of Sam’s Choice private label Fair Trade coffees.

It’s a pretty bold statement. Indeed, the promotions Whole Foods and Wal-Mart are offering show just how much progress sustainability issues have made on both ends of the retail spectrum. They’ll also, undoubtedly, guide other companies towards similar initiatives.

But why wait for one or the other to get ahead? Many mainstream grocers know their consumers and follow the trends. They should use this information to stick their necks out a little and provide something unique.