Posts Tagged: Banana Price Watch

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12
Mar 10

Banana Price Watch: Australia edition

It’s been a while since I’ve posted; lots of travel. I’m in Sydney, Australia right now, and I’m surprised at the wide variety of banana prices here. Australia is a major banana-growing nation, so it doesn’t need to import (though banana disease might change that.) In a one-hour walk through town, I saw some pretty divergent costs. What’s key – see the analysis at the end of this entry – is that Aussie prices probably, for better and worse, reflect our banana future.

Not the Trader Joe's price.

First up, the above fruit, at five for 5.00. That’s not per kilo, that’s per fruit. With the Aussie dollar trading about even with U.S. currency, that’s the A NEW RECORD for fruit sold at a standard market – over $10USD per pound, and that’s a “special.” (Maybe my math is wrong. Let me know; I’m comparing at six ounces per fruit.) Compare that to Trader Joe’s, in the U.S., which sells bananas – imported from Latin America – five for a single buck.

A little better?

These go for $3.49 per kilo, or $1.58 per pound. Using the standard index of six ounces per fruit, that’s a pricey 59 cents per. Ouch.

More like it, but still…

This bunch, at the equivalent of 90 cents per pound U.S., was at Aldi, which bills itself as “Australia’s Cheapest Supermarket.” But even that’s a high price; no major U.S. supermarket chain that I know of charges more than 79 cents.

ANALYSIS: So, why the premium? One would think that since these are local fruit, prices would be much lower. Not so, for two reasons.  Australia is a first-world country, which means that banana workers there are paid a living wage. That’s different than the U.S. system of banana economics, which still relies on exploitative labor arrangements in Latin America, source of all our fruit. Second, Australia isn’t looking at the Panama Disease scourge that threatens to wipe out the world’s commercial banana crop; it is fighting the disease now, with less-than-encouraging results (at least in the field. In the lab, things may be better. See my Australia page for related posts.) Supply and demand affects banana prices everywhere, as I wrote last year in the New York Times. Our future probably involves higher prices, because of banana disease, but it also isn’t crazy to wonder why third-world workers shouldn’t be paid a wage that would give them the same kind of economic status as Aussie banana laborers. But they’re not, and they suffer because of it – and because we insist on banana with record-shattering low prices, like these I recently saw on a Los Angeles street corner.

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11
Oct 09

Cheap Walmart bananas in UK; Fair Trade in U.S.

You’ll have to go to the U.K., but there’s apparently a banana price war happening – the ASDA supermarket chain has been cutting prices on the fruit for weeks now. Currently, the fruit runs at 38 pence per kilo, which comes out to about 30 cents (U.S.) per pound. That’s the lowest I’ve ever seen for a supermarket fruit – and ASDA offers home delivery.  The Sun – Britain’s raciest and most awesome daily paper thinks this is big news, too, reporting that other chains are really, really peeved.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the chain is owned by Walmart, which has – in the U.S. – undercut Chiquita and Dole by sourcing its own unbranded fruit, and has added a new twist to the strategy by offering Fair Trade product in 100 of its stores, according to an announcement made last week. (I’ve got issues with Fair Trade – more on that next week.)

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5
Aug 09

Banana (High) Price Watch

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Starbucks, Los Angeles: At 90 cents, we’ve got a record for a non-airport banana. This is the second-cheapest item on the Starbucks snack menu (after vanilla mini-scones, at 75 cents.) I was told the fruit is not a big seller, and that a cursory check of the dumpster after closing time would prove this.

The banana price is seen as too high, I’m guessing, even at a place where the customers seem willing to purchase donuts for a buck and a half, which I’m sure is unconstitutional.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

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30
Jul 09

Record-Shattering Banana Price Drop in LA!

With supermarket prices still hovering at around 79¢ a pound in Southern California, the traditional bargain spot for the banana lovers has been Trader Joe’s, where the fruit is sold individually at 19¢ each (that comes out to about a half buck a pound – see my earlier post on TJ’s pricing strategy.) But there are cheaper ways to get bananas in L.A. At the city’s Grand Central Square Market – a sprawling version of the mercados common to most Latin American cities and villages – at least two vendors are battling it out with fruit at 33¢ per pound (that’s about 13¢ a banana.)

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It’s war at the Grand Central Square Market in downtown Los Angeles. These fruit stands are right across the aisle from each other.

But a street vendor at the corner of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, just a couple of miles west, has them both  beat. His price of eight-for-a-buck (that’s the minimum purchase) comes out the same as the market, but he lets you pick and choose, so you can go bigger. Even when I let him select for me, I made out: my octomom-sized bag weighed in at 52 ounces, or less than 31¢ per pound.

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Such a deal you can’t pass up! Click here for directions to the spot. Bonus points, because you’ll end up right next to my favorite churro truck.

Want some additional economics? This year, in Ecuador – the country that exports more bananas to the U.S. than any other – the spot price for bananas has fluctuated between about $3.00 and $7.00 per 40-pound box of the fruit, or between about seven and seventeen cents a pound. Our supermarket chains pay about double that, wholesale.

Think about that low number: seven cents a pound to produce the world’s most popular fruit.  Compare that to those tart cherries that are in season and so good right now. This has been a banner year for the Wisconsin producers of that fruit, and though they’re pleased – last season was lousy – they’re also worried that the big numbers will mean a drop in prices, which are now hovering at about 40¢ per pound. Wholesale. To live and work  in the U.S.A. is a good thing.


[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]


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21
Apr 09

Banana Price Watch: 7-Eleven, Los Angeles


That’s my beloved local Sev. To zoom in, you’ve got to go there. So go.

Interesting strategy at my favorite local convenience store, on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Rosemont In the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles (just steps from Dodger Stadium.)

Instead of the typical branded, presented-in-a-box fruit Chiquita is selling in many U.S. convenience stores, the fruit here is bought at local supermarkets and sold in an ordinary basket. At the current price – 69 cents per banana – the store manager told me customers purchased a respectable fifty or so a day. Still, he thought he could do better, and was about to add a twofer, with a pair of bananas going for a buck. 

The DIY approach nets the local shop a considerable profit over Chiquita's all-in-one strategy, which involves a national distribution network of refrigerated product, each fruit with a sticker on it, to of about 13,000 convenience stores. Chiquita's suggested retail price for its product is 75 to 99 cents. The benefit, it says, is that that the controlled supplyand special packaging allows the fruit to arrive at the stores perfectly ripe – eliminating the need for store managers to spend time waiting for the green bananas typically found on supermarket shelves to ripen. The downside is profit margins: Chiquita charges C-stores about forty cents per fruit. My 7-Eleven manager can buy bananas at the Trader Joe's down the street for half that. 

Analysis: though it is certainly more profitable for convenience stores to adopt the DIY approach, most local mini-marts probably won't do so – meaning that the Chiquita method will likely be more successful. Whatever else the company does wrong or right, this is a visionary and important (though as-yet unproven) strategy, because it demonstrates the banana's changing – and critical – role in the American diet: as the best, most affordable stand-in for the mountains of junk food that have created a massive juvenile health crisis.
Mobile Blogging from here.
(And about that link in that first paragraph – I'm from Brooklyn.) 

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

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4
Mar 09

Banana Price Watch – New Record!

We all know things are expensive in Alaska. How expensive? You can’t see the price tag, but my girlfriend – who is visiting there this week – reports that these rather weak (they’ve traveled far) looking bunches at a supermarket in Dutch Harbor (the Aleutian island home of “The Deadliest Catch” television program) went for a whopping $2.49 a pound. That’s more than triple what we’re paying these days in Los Angeles. Unhealthy snacks are even more costly: check out the Doritos.

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4
Jan 09

Mega-bargain Bananas – at a Gas Station?

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Saw these in late December off Interstate 93 at a Circle K in Plymouth, New Hampshire. What a deal! But does that mean banana prices overall are dropping? Nope – they’re still all over the map. Here in Los Angeles, my local market is selling them for the oddball price of 77 cents a pound.
Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

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13
Sep 08

Shenanigans!

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The new record holder, blocks from my house. A buck and a half a pound for what? “Very sweet” bananas? Not even organic. These were at the weekly farmers market held on Sunset Boulevard in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. The genuine fresh produce offered there is great (this week, the strawberries were awesome), but I wonder whether shoppers have any clue that the bananas sold here – for double the price of what they cost at the Von’s market five minutes away – are exactly the same as what they’d get at that major supermarket.

Sweetness is a function of ripeness and travel time. These pricey fruit came from the same Latin American plantations, on the same boats, and via the same trucks that every other banana sold in the U.S. does. The vendor probably peeled off the Chiquita (or Dole, or other major importer) labels.

Good news for my shopping neighbors: Pineapples – at $4.50 each (upper right) – are a bargain. Vons charges $4.99.