Thursday, August 10, 2006

What's Up with Bananas?

Acouple of months ago, the fruit vendor I buy my morning banana from raised his price from 25 cents to 35 cents each. I didn't think it was that big a deal and just figured it was probably about time for the price to go up since I'd been paying 25 cents for years. Today, I didn't have exact change to throw in the cup, so I handed the guy 50 cents. Then he didn't give me any change. There was a moment of confusion, and then he gave me a quarter back. It turns out the bananas have gone back down to 25 cents. So now I'm wondering when that happened-- I may have been overpaying for my bananas for weeks!
But I can't help wondering what made bananas more expensive for that brief period of time. Was it something to do with the supply of bananas? Or did the fruit man discover that many customers would not pay 35 cents for a banana? Maybe it wasn't just the amount itself, but the fact that it wasn't an easy one-coin amount... who knows...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chiquita raises US banana prices as profits slump

Anonymous said...

Why not just buy them at the grocery store, I just paid $.79 a POUND for bananas.

Madame X said...

I know, I'm very bad about remembering to buy them at the grocery store... also, I like them kind of green, and if I buy a few at once, they end up too brown by the time I eat some of them!

Anonymous said...

Who knew there was so much banana gossip to go around?

optioned unarmed said...

Is that a banana in your blogspot?

Madame X said...

...Or is someone just happy to see me?

Bitty said...

Not a bad price, even at 35 cents. When I'm at work, if I want a banana, the cafe charges me $1.25.

Madame X said...

$1.25 for a banana?!? Now that is outrageous!

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure where the US gets it's bananas from, but we had a cyclone here in in Australia that wiped out all the bananas. They went up to about $7 each. It was big news.