Anyone have any idea why, at the grocery store, red peppers are sold by weight while green peppers are sold by quantity?
I don’t know. Maybe greens are easier to come by, so they’re cheaper, and thus sold by quantity. They are cheaper, right? That’s what I’d think if they were two or three for a buck, and red peppers right next door are sold by the lb., making Mr. Fool (me) think they are more expensive. BUT there’s also the possibility that green peppers are IN FACT just red peppers without the red. They got green. hmmm…I seem to have lost myself…
(I just ate a green pepper, so maybe I am being “mind-controlled” by the juicy vitamins…)
Next time you visit your grocery store, buy some green peppers. Take them to the checkout and ask for them to be weighed. Further request that the assistant divide the number of green peppers by the weight, giving you a cost per lb (or whatever).
This doesn’t answer the question but it will annoy the store assistants if you continue doing this.
Red bell peppers have to remain on the plant long enough to turn red. This makes their harvest time longer, and they may not ship as well and turn soft, so they are more expensive. They are much sweeter, though, and supposedly have a lot more vitamin C. New varieties are on the market, that turn red sooner, but they don’t have the taste of well ripened peppers.
Red jalapenos are a delight, hot * and * sweet, but I can’t usually find them in stores. Makes it worth growing your own, especially for hot pepper jelly. Mmmmmm.
I have never encountered such a deranged practice. I’ve only ever seen them sold by weight.
My local store sells “variety peppers” - red, orange, yellow, etc. - by the lb, but the green ones are sometimes sold by the pound and sometimes by quantity. It’s been my rule of thumb that when they’re selling green peppers by quantity they’re starting to get nasty and they want to clear them out.
Bell Peppers generally differ in price as per color. Yellow and Red require more ripening, more care.
Sometimes, peppers are sold by volume - rather than by weight - because of the different colors, and because they are relatively light. Many folks need just 1-3, and selling them by units is just easier. Fruit scales are not very precise, and it’s sometimes fruitless to weigh two peppers.
So, if you are buying four or five peppers, and one is yellow and one is red, charging per unit just makes sense.
Hey, corn is sold by the ear…and other veggies are sold by the unit too…don’t pick on peppers.
I used to own a grocery store, and the reason we did it that way was laziness. If our suppliers charged us by the pound, that’s how we charged the customer. It made more sense than counting each box of bell peppers to determine how many per pound.
I never could figure out why the wholesalers charged by the pound sometimes and by the each others, so I really didn’t answere your question, huh?
However, upon reflection, it propably has to do with price. There are probably three to five peppers per pound, so if the $/# goes up, charge by the each so the unit price appears lower.
Just a WAG.
The other day, my (older) sister tried to tell me that the reason red peppers are so much more expensive than green peppers was that they come from teh same plant, and once a plant has produced a red pepper, it stops producing peppers at all. This sounds like it can’t possibly be true, and I called her a liar right to her face (but nicely). She insists that’s the case, and I had no way to back up my assertion that it wasn’t true, anyway.
Anyone know the real scoop?
While this makes sense, it is certainly not always true. The only proof I have is the plant in my back yard, which definitely continued to produce after the first few peppers had gone to red. Production definitely dropped off, though.
I doubt that is why red peppers are more expensive, though. The entire plant is harvested by a huge machine - its not like farmers are selectively picking off the ripe green ones and leaving the plant alone.
Red peppers and green peppers are, in fact, the same thing, just in different stages of ripeness.
I’ve got somewhere around 40 of these red peppers (the joys of pure compost and long summers) that I grew because the plant is decorative, and I have no idea what to do with that many of them. Got a recipe for this jelly?
Totally untrue. If true, I just drove by a bunch of bankrupt pepper farmers in Mullica Hill, New Jersey. They push the peppers to get RED to satisfy the many local Italians who love Red bell peppers - myself included.
Red and Yellow peppers represent different levels of ripening (aka ROTTING), so farmers get 'em while they are green and can be …picked/handled/shipped/set for display/bought/stored/eaten.
The pepper plants are the same. It’s the level of ripening/rot that is permitted that lets the pepper go red and yellow on the vine.
GOT IT?
Ah HA! I thought as much. Now I can prove it. Thanks.
Oh good lord, I can hear someone jumping in with a technicality:
If you have a pepper plant and you leave the peppers on to turn red, then you effectively lowered, or stopped the production of that plant.
If you pick the greens ones, you free up the plant’s energy to go make more peppers.
If you tie up the plant waiting for red peppers to develop, you are stopping the plant’s max output. Helps explain the cost of red peppers.
BUT, you don’t ruin the plant or make it nueter for crissakes.
There are some red peppers that are bred to be red, and others that once were the regular green bell pepper variety that was ripened to full redness. The latter are superior in flavor.
How can you tell them apart? Look at the bottom of the pepper. If it has three lobes, it’s one of the “bred to be red” variety. If it has four or more lobes it was “ripened to redness.”
I work in a grocery store right now, as a cashier. Part of my training, actually an entire day, was devoted on produce. We sell peppers usually by the pound, unless there is a sale when we do it by quanity. On the big peppers that is very rare. (Jalopeno’s we do, sometimes)
For why red peppers are more expensive, we were told it was because of the time it takes to grow and let the ripen. That could be wrong…I still say it’s because it’s bigger.
And if you really want to know-the codes for produce, we were told, are universal in the US at least. So most anywhere you go, red peppers will be 4088, green-4065, green seedless grapes 4022, red-4023.
At least, that’s what my manager said. I find it’s pretty true.