Southeastern Connecticut. Last I looked (two or three weeks ago) they were 62 cents a pound at the commissary and 58 cents at Super WalMart. No idea what they are at the two “regular” supermarkets in town.
[QUOTE=nicky]
are bananas a loss leader?
[/QUOTE]
If they are, the grocery chains are taking a big hit. Ripening facilities aren’t free and neither is the management and attention required vs just stacking boxes in a warehouse.
Even back at least as far as 1961, Safeway has been ripening bananas in their own facilities.
This article from 1999 describes the process.
Whether it’s just watching bananas ripen at the warehouse and sending them off to stores at the right moment or today’s technological solutions that are so popular that the dominant manufacturer of ripening rooms doubled in size last year, there’s got to be some gold in those nanners to make it worthwhile.
$0.59/pound in the Kansas City suburbs.
29 cents/lb. at Aldi. (Alabama)
Houston Walmart–48 cents/lb. I am making my wife a banana pudding tomorrow. A BIG ONE!
The grocery stores make all their banana profit re-selling the tarantulas that come in with the 'nanas.
South Texas – 48c a pound, same as they’ve been for years.
There was a brief spike a few years ago, and since then, all bananas seem to have a skin that is a little more velvety and less durable. A grocer explained to me that a disease ran through the banana crop in Central America, and now all the bananas are a different variety (resistant to the disease) from the ones we had a decade ago;.