Aside from the awnings, the produce department also has a bit of decor above the entrance to the department, with various fake (but realistic) vegetables hanging from the ceiling -- pretty nice! Anonymous in Houston, this part's for you: I'm not sure why Eataly sells bananas in shrink-wrapped trays when pretty much everything else is sold loose, but they're selling them for €3.75 for around 700g, or around $4 for a pound and a half -- I don't buy bananas very often, but that seems quite pricey to me! Maybe they're something special, but even organic bananas are just 89¢/lb at my local Safeway, and if the conversion they use for online ordering is accurate, four bananas (which seems to be the typical number in those trays) would be around a dollar depending on what kind you bought.
Huh, bananas being sold in wrapped trays like it is ground beef or something? That's, well, bananas!
ReplyDeleteAs for the pricing, it seems from my very basic research that bananas sold in the EU are sometimes sourced from within the EU, but the EU does receive banana imports from Africa and even Latin America. Thus, it is entirely possible that those bananas are sourced from the same plantations as our bananas! that might explain the rather ridiculous pricing.
I don't know if wrapping bananas like that might help to keep them fresher longer. I'm not sure about that, but it is strange to see!
Oh, and I could probably make a joke about how these bananas are priced similarly to bananas sold at Publix stores in Florida, but these bananas probably are expensive even compared to Publix bananas. Now that is saying something!
Since I hadn't looked at bananas at other stores when I was in Italy, I decided to do some research now. It looks like Tigre and Carrefour sell bananas for around €1.50-2 per kg, which is a little more expensive than Seattle pricing, but not particularly crazy. Carrefour apparently sells "bananiti" (little bananas) for an insane €13.92/kg, though, so I guess ripoffs for pre-packaged produce aren't a US exclusive! (I'm thinking of the crazy prices stores charge for pre-cut fruit in particular, but also those little oranges with brand names that can be incredibly pricey.)
DeleteIt seems like bananas in trays are a common thing for Italy ("in vassoio", meaning "in a tray", is indicated on several of the Carrefour listings). I'm not sure why -- the only time I've ever seen bananas sold packaged in the US was when Costco used to sell them in bags, and their bags always had vent holes cut in them rather than being all sealed up like Italy's banana trays. If there was a benefit to packaging them like this, I would have thought that someone in the US would have tried it, especially considering how much Americans like pre-packaged things!
I've seen bananas growing in Italy, but I have no idea whether they grow them at any sort of commercial scale. Carrefour's website lists various countries in Central America as the origin of the bananas they sell (even the ones that aren't branded Dole or Chiquita), so I guess they do have to travel a long way -- that still doesn't explain why Eataly is so much more expensive than other Italian stores!
Frustratingly, Publix's website doesn't say how much their bananas cost, but I'm sure it's less than this!