Fans of Trader Joe's know that there are some staples they can always count on, like those 19-cent bananas. Selling individual bananas is pretty genius, and by the time 2024 rolled around, the store had been doing that — at the same price — for about 20 years. It's what's known as a loss leader, which is basically an item that's sold for a loss but gets people in the door, spending more, and perhaps even shifting their shopping habits to make a store their go-to.
Plenty of stores do it — it's one of the well-known secrets behind Costco's $4.99 rotisserie chickens . Then, something surprising happened: The price of those single bananas went up to 23 cents.
It doesn't seem like much of a jump, but it's more than a 20% increase in price. And it came years after the COVID pandemic, and well after headlines were filled with economists who were baffled by the continuously rising cost of food . Why did Trader Joe's finally raise the price on one of its most famous loss leaders? A spokesperson told CNN that it had "reached a point where this change is necessary," and that's pretty vague.
They also said that the prices customers are charged change only when corporate's costs change, and it turns out that there's a strange thing that's going on with bananas. After holding steady for a long time, fears of scarcity and the spiraling impacts of climate change have sent prices up, up, and up. Fears over the future of banana crops began in Rome Specifically, concerns were raised at th.
