Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The price of bananas
Local banana prices, at May 26, per kilo:
Lidl .......................................... 69p
Sainsbury's (FairTrade) ............ 68p
Yasar Halim .......................... 139p
Fairline ................................... 64p
NB. last line added on 8 June
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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One place is one order of magnitude more expensive than the others. A significant difference, no?
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Wikipedia or Carterpedia? A tough choice.
Anyway, what's wrong with saying one price appears to be half, double or twice the price of another?
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Alan there's nothing wrong with your preferred descriptions. I try to avoid "100%" which can be confusing. I was merely trying to emphasis the huge difference in price for a common and easily comparable commodity. Alex didn't seem to notice it.
A friend suggested that Yasar Halim was good value for fruit and vegetables. Possibly, but their Del Monte bananas are not among them.
A while ago I criticised Sainsbury's in a popular post about the price of their flapjacks. I'm happy to report that not only do they sell Fairtrade bananas, but theirs are amongst the most competitively priced.
It pays to shop around.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Really? You criticised Sainsbury's flapjack pricing? I bet that was ignored as well.
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Thank you for the link John; yes flapjacks are now over 18,000 views (but Hugh's who's counting?) and it will likely remain several orders of magnitude more popular than bananas!
All of which goes to show that many people, if not all, are interested in the price of food. Especially in a recession and for those on lower incomes.
Bananas are a staple food in some places and I too find them fascinating (maybe it's just a Kiwi thing).
Call me old fashioned, but I try to eat one every morning.
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Oh bugger off guys, this is an important issue and Clive brings it up with JUST the bare facts. The main piece of information I look for in a banana is its source. I will actually pay double for Caribbean bananas.
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Is it not interesting that the bananas in our lovely, independent, local shop are more than twice the price of both the budget and not-budget local supermarkets? I can currently buy fourteen fairtrade, organic bananas from Ocado for £2 giving a per banana price of less than 15p. Now isn't this really, really interesting? Could our local grocer be having one over on us or is it the nasty big corporations driving the price down?
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I personally find almost everything about bananas fascinating. This is not usually a fun topic to bring up with people. Sorry, back to planning, bins and traffic.
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Fascinating? Yes, for each of the reasons you give, John: quality and origin of the food; Fair Trade pricing; convenience of in-store purchase compared with home delivery.
I think I'd also have questioned the price differential Clive spotted. Was there perhaps some labelling mistake?
All these factors point to the questions asked by the Mary Portas Review about the future of our High Streets and Town Centre shopping.
When it comes specifically to food shopping, I pay attention to articles by Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University. For several years he seems to have been fairly gloomy about the interests of consumers losing out between those of the giant retailers and the international food manufacturing corporations. He was also very critical of the Coalition's policies.
But earlier this year he wrote about the positive impact of localism and consumer interest in seasonal food, farmers' markets, and local produce sold in the big supermarkets.
I hope our local Turkish and other ethnic minority-owned food businesses are well placed and canny enough to benefit from this development. But only if they keep abreast of businesses like Ocado, Tesco and Sainsbury's, the move to online sales and "local" versions of supermarkets.
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Alan I presume you're aware of this. The EU used to buy, at a "fair" price, bananas from ex colonies in the Caribbean. The WTO, after a complaint from American corporations that owned the banana trade in South America, ruled against the EU. So now we give them a crap price for their bananas because they have to compete with Del Monte and Chiquita, and we have to give them more foreign aid to make up for this. I always try to buy Caribbean bananas, no matter the price. Fascinating before we even get to the massive, massive price discrepancies locally.
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Permalink Reply by Felicitá on
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I agree with John..
I've noticed on a few of these threads a slight disdain (at the very least) towards the Turkish shops/community and am disappointed by this, although not much surprised. Some people that comment here do seem to come very much from an "us/them" angle. Such a shame for a "community forum" - no doubt these are the same people eager for the area to get "smartened up" as a shortcut to driving the rents up and the riff raff out...
I highly doubt that if massive corporate chains such as Sainsbury's and the like were not operating to take away trade from local shops in the area, that the price would not quickly go down.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Whilst it's not unanimous, I thought in general Felicita, there's been a good amount of support for all local shops and restaurants of whatever flavour on HoL. Take this thread with over 6,000 views discussing which is the best Turkish restaurant.
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