Shrinkflation: organic bananas

[prairiewindmomma]

I ordered 3 bunches of organic bananas, my usual weekly order. Each bunch typically has 6-7 bananas, so 18-21 total. My family will each go through about 3 bananas a week, and three bunches has consistently worked for us forever.

I got my Walmart grocery order today. Each of my three bundles contained exactly 4 bananas.

If you are going shopping soon, will you see if you see similar shenanigans? I am curious if this is a new trend.

[Soror]

Here bananas and most all produce is sold by the pound so it wouldn't matter the size of the bunch. I shop at Aldi's mostly and they have some produce pre-bagged but bananas are still sold by the pound.

[Katy]

My order two days ago had 7 bananas, but the variety was half the length of the normal kind.  

[Corraleno]

Trader Joe's sells produce either by the package or per piece, and the current price for very large organic bananas is 25 cents each. I just weighed a bunch of 6, which works out to 2 lbs 7 oz for $1.50, or about 62 cents/lb. I just looked up the average price of bananas, and apparently the price for conventional bananas has hovered around 58 cents/lb for the last 8 years, so 62 cents for organic seems pretty reasonable. 

Edited October 30, 2021 by Corraleno

[Selkie]

I just bought seven bunches at Walmart a couple days ago. The bananas were the usual size and there were 6-7 per bunch, same as always.

[PeterPan]

I think you just got a bizarre pull situation. If it really matters how many bananas you get, you can put that in the notes section. I *think* walmart has notes for the order, right? 

 

[prairiewindmomma]

1 minute ago, PeterPan said:

I think you just got a bizarre pull situation. If it really matters how many bananas you get, you can put that in the notes section. I *think* walmart has notes for the order, right? 

 

I don’t see one. I can order and pay per banana, and I will next time—this one just struck me as kind of weird.

 

[Lecka]

The $5 popcorn tins at Wal-Mart are even smaller this year.  They had already gotten smaller than they used to be a couple of year ago.  

[kbutton]

I think the bananas are just a luck of the draw thing. I can order by pound or number of bananas online. Size has always varied somewhat. 

I imagine we'll be seeing lots of packages shrink before long, but Aldi is one store that tends to resist that trend (and Trader Joe's). 

[bibiche]

Am I the only one who calls a small group of bananas a hand? I reserve “bunch” for a grouping of several hands.

Edited October 30, 2021 by bibiche

[prairiewindmomma]

4 minutes ago, bibiche said:

Am I the only one who calls a small group of bananas a hand? I reserve “bunch” for a grouping of several hands.

You are correct that one banana is a finger, a small group is a hand, and several hands is a bunch….but I don’t know anyone who uses the term hand properly in every day speech (or in grocery ads). 

[Arcadia]

Trader Joe’s and Costco’s bananas (organic and non-organic) varies in sizes by batch. The organic ones tends to be smaller than non-organic ones most of the time. When bananas are small, my husband would opt for Costco since it is pay by weight. When they are large, my husband would buy at Trader Joe’s. My husband is the only one that likes bananas so we don’t buy much.

[bibiche]

40 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

You are correct that one banana is a finger, a small group is a hand, and several hands is a bunch….but I don’t know anyone who uses the term hand properly in every day speech (or in grocery ads). 

Well, you know one virtually. 😉 

[Lady Florida.]

I don't buy organic but I had a Walmart curbside order yesterday that included organic zucchini. I didn't order organic but allowed substitutions and that's what they gave me. I also didn't order by the pound but instead ordered two. The two organic zucchini they gave me equal the size of one non organic. Now I need another zucchini for the dish I'm making. 

Is this normal for the size of organic items to be smaller? As I said I don't order organic and don't even really look at that section when I'm shopping so I was surprised at how small they are.

[Arcadia]

6 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

Is this normal for the size of organic items to be smaller? As I said I don't order organic and don't even really look at that section when I'm shopping so I was surprised at how small they are.

They do trend smaller for carrots, zucchini, cucumbers, bananas. Not so much for onions, potatoes.

[Idalou]

On 10/30/2021 at 2:18 PM, kbutton said:

I think the bananas are just a luck of the draw thing. I can order by pound or number of bananas online. Size has always varied somewhat. 

I imagine we'll be seeing lots of packages shrink before long, but Aldi is one store that tends to resist that trend (and Trader Joe's). 

Not much, but still. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by Idalou

[historically accurate]

I got the tiniest little head of broccoli this past week (non-organic) from Walmart. It's so cute, but a little sad for a family to eat on.

[Corraleno]

I think with online orders, produce size is generally a combination of natural variation in what's in stock plus what the shopper happens to prefer or randomly pick. I've gotten wildly different sizes of things l even when it was all organic and the orders were only a week or 10 days apart. And of course it always seems like when I order a small number of something I get tiny ones, and when I order a large number I get giant ones. The first time ordered sweet potatoes from Whole Foods I asked for 6, thinking they'd be the size of the ones sold in 5 lb bags at TJs, and ended up with 6 of the most ginormous tubers I've ever seen in my life — together they weighed a total of 9 lbs! So the next time I asked for 3 and got tiny ones. I've ordered 2 bok choi and got 2 small limp ones, then ordered 4 the next week and got 4 giant ones each the size of a head of romaine. I think some shoppers will pick through produce to get the biggest and "best" and some will just grab whatever is closest, which may be the ones that everyone else passed over.