I was at Wally Mart over the weekend and saw oversized 18x24 inch greeting cards for Valentine’s day.
$3
The regular cards are twice that.
Chicken quarters at the Mexican market makes pork seem like steak. It goes on sale pretty often at $.49 a pound. The most expensive it gets is $1.09. I’m kind of suspicious about where it’s sourced from.
Volume!
Potato farming is an excellent example of “go big or go home” as the costs are huge and the profits are thin. Five years ago, the typical numbers were that a farmer would see $200-500 profit per acre to grow conventional russets. And that’s if they didn’t experience too much rain, not enough rain, bugs, etc.
The quickest stat I could lay eyes on was the US grew about 21 million tons of spuds in 2017. Only about 10% of the crop makes it to your local grocery store as “fresh” potatoes - the rest is used at an industrial level to make potato chips, french fries, etc. It’s entirely possible that your ten pound bag is a loss-leader.
It would cost a lot more if you had to start with fresh dinosaur.
Has anyone mentioned hot dogs? If you want to feed a bunch of kids and buy the cheapest you can get, you’ll pay more for the buns than for the meat.
When they get that cheap, it’s low grade lips and rectums.
But Steve! I like beef lips!
[aside]
I just went to YouTube to try to find the Steve Martin clip that line comes from. No luck. But the first couple hits for [steve martin beef lips] show some really amazing recipes for beef lips. With “interesting” pics.
Who knew? Not me. Makes sense folks would cook them though; at some level meat’s meat.
[/aside]
Made me think of a Homer Simpson line: “But without the grease, all you can taste is the hog anus.”
Dan Akroyd in The Great Outdoors.
You know what the gourmet here wanted? Hot dogs! You know what they’re made of, Chet? Huh? Lips and assholes!
Challenge accepted!
http://canadaweekly.ca/chopped-after-hours-bizarre-foods-food-network/
My brother works at a grocery warehouse. There’s whole climate controlled room just for bananas. They’re delicate! So cheap.
And yeah milk. I’ve never seen it under a dollar but it’s often $1.99. I can’t believe it. I often have milk go bad with a few cups left and I feel guilty about tossing it. Not for the price but because of all the work that went into producing it.
Oh yeah, banana rooms (or in this case, a banana wing!) are a unique specialty with their tight climate control and ethylene gas injectors. They’re warehoused green and more or less dormant until needed, then the ethylene is added to ripen them in about 24 hours. A lot of care and technology goes into your breakfast banana - more than you’d expect for 69 cents a pound.
I read someplace that the banana wholesalers can provide fruit to the markets set to ripen tomorrow, or the next day, or any day up to a week in advance. Somewhere I saw a photo of a Korean package of five individual bananas, each set to ripen a day later. Perfect for taking to work. It sounds like something someone should sell in this country.
Midwest gas chain KwikTrip had bananas always 29 cents / pound. Until yesterday I noticed they went up to 39 cents. They own their own dairies and bakeries. Daily fresh deliveries. Stores typically were 49-59 cents for bananas. The bagged overripe are in the 39 cent range. Bags have banana bread recipes preprinted on them.
Newfoundland fishermen sell the codfish, but save the tongues and cheeks for themselves – by far, the best part.
The natural parts to kiss at a screech-in. 
https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/screech-in-screech-newfoundland
Flights! The first flight to Japan that I paid for was in 1984 and cost $850. The last trip I went directly from Japan to the States was in about 2011 and cost about the same. Of course, the flight 40 years ago were only about 1/3 filed, and now they are packed in like sardines but still it’s cheaper to go now than it was 40 years ago.
And I have read that some of those are much tastier than Cavendish, but consumers are programmed for a certain look with no blemishes. Apparently, while we might get past a different color, brown spots are a deal-breaker for consumers. Just what I’ve heard- I can’t swear it’s true
It’s not that we’re “programmed” but that Cavendish is virtually the only type of banana available in most markets.
My store sells Cavendish, red bananas, a mini-banana type, and plantains (just one type). We have some customers - some of them lily-White Midwesterners yet - who favor the red ones when we can get them and they are quite tasty, even if subtly different than Cavendish. I think if necessary consumers could make the transition to a new variety.
Not exactly. Browned/“over ripe” bananas are the best for baking purposes. The store I work at sorts the Cavendish by green, yellow-ripe, and browning because people buy all three depending on intended use. Heck, I’ve rolled up to checkout with all three at the same time myself - the yellow ones for use that day or the next, green for later in the week, and brown for making banana bread/muffins.
It’s bruises that are a deal killer.
Ripe-yellow Cavendish are our biggest sellers by far, but there’s a market for the others.