Friday night, doing my grocery shopping, I passed the display of clementines and headed for the tangerines–not because I don’t like clementines but because they only sell them in those five-pound crates. I live in a small household, and we couldn’t eat five pounds of clementines fast enough for them not to go bad.
Why haven’t supermarkets taken notice of this? I would think they’d sell more clementines if people could buy them in small quantities rather than do what I did and pass them up entirely because five pounds is just too damn much. So what gives?
It is a marketing strategy because Clementines are still highly seasonal (about October - February with their peak around Christmas). They are one of the only popular fruits or vegetables sold in the U.S. that cannot be found off-season at any price.
That leads Clementine producers in Florida, California, Spain and Morocco to produce a huge crop that has to be sold fairly quickly because they are also very perishable. The only way to make any money doing that is to produce a very large amount of them in a fairly short amount of time and then sell them just as quickly before they go bad. Bulk sales help ensure that.
Clementines are also fairly small and inexpensive individually and some of them are dry or spoiled when you peel one. That is an additional disincentive to either buy or sell them individually.
Where are you? When I first discovered clementines, back around the turn of the century, that was true. But here in the northeastern US (OK, Connecticut and NYC), they’ve been available year-round for quite a while.
With a notable decline in quality, I might add. When they were only available for three months or so, it seemed to me that 95% of the clementines in a crate were extremely sweet and juicy, while the remaining 5% were ordinary. Now 85% are ordinary, and 15% of them are unappealing at best.
I’m usually really disappointed in citrus. The only citrus I can depend on anymore are honey tangerines (which I couldn’t even find in stores this season) and Sumo tangerines.
I am in the Boston area. I am a guy and I never buy them myself (although I do love them) so my information may be outdated. In my personal experience, crates of Clementines are just something that appear sometime around the holidays because someone else bought them and then stick around a while longer only to fade away until the next year. I do go produce shopping several times a week and never noticed them being available even now outside of their winterish-window. I still think I would have a really hard time finding them during the summer or early fall even in Boston but I admit that maybe somebody has found a way to either produce them during more of the year or store them so that they are still available but of compromised quality.
It may be a regional thing. We just bought some last weekend at a farmer’s market here in Sacramento, where they were sold by the pound. I bought six (fruits, not pounds).
I can get them locally in 3-pound bags, which seems about right for us. Even though we probably average eating maybe 2 a day (altogether, not per person), they last long enough in the fridge for us to finish a bag before they start going bad.
IIRC, clementines are the same as mandarin oranges. Tangerines are a different type of citrus.
I see the clementines in the supermarket pretty much year-round, always in the crates. I think even a three-pound bag would probably be too much as I prefer to buy just a few at a time and eat them before they start going bad.
The thing about clementines is they’re so easy to peel and basically guaranteed to be sweet, and just the right size to have with a sandwich for lunch. Of course, with a regular orange or tangerine you can slice it across the grain, pop the slice open by hand, and eat them that way. It’s just kind of a pain to pack them with your lunch because you have to wrap them in plastic wrap and put them in a plastic bag to keep them from leaking all over your lunch.
I live in a one-person household, and I EASILY go through a five-pound bag of them. They’re so tiny, I routinely eat three at a sitting. While watching TV–instead of sour cream and onion potato chips.
Basically the answer is that they’re all Mandarin oranges of some kind.
I honestly can’t tell much difference between a tangerine, a Clementine and a Satsuma, as far as flavor goes. They’re all orange and taste like what I think of as a “tangerine”.
I’ve seen both the 3-lb. and 5-lb. packaging in the grocery stores. If you think you’d eat three pound, you might ask your produce manager if he/she carries the smaller package.
When the season is really good, the kids and hubby will eat them like candy. Some years, I can’t keep enough clementines in the house for them. Since they are truly seasonal, small, and nutritious, I don’t mind letting the kids have two at a time. Some years, well, I’ll buy a box and that will be it for the season.
Perhaps because sold separately ( which does impose a cost on the final seller, partially because he won’t recoup his costs of lighting, transport, etc. etc. on the profit of one sold piece of fruit ) the price would eventually be highly expensive. Much as if they sold each grape separately instead of in bunches.
I only wish avocados were sold in bulk. Sold each, they haven’t been less than £1 for a few years, ( around 65p then ) and I’ve seen them for £1.50 each.
How are they sold? On this side of the Atlantic, I can’t recall ever having seen them sold in any way other than loose bulk, except for as aseptic avocado puree in little pouches meant for easy guacamole.