photo: Georgi Bidenko, PrahaIN.cz/Bananas in Alberta
Anyone who buys bananas has surely noticed this. Individual pieces are lying around among the bunches. Those who want one banana will pluck it rather than marry such a “loner”. “It’s a non-saleable product,” saleswoman Dagmar confirmed to us in Prague’s Lidl in Vinohrady.
But it wasn’t the first time we noticed it.
About a month ago, we bought bananas in Billa at the main station. People tend to use this branch for small purchases, such as buying a snack for the train journey. Many of them choose a banana. One.
“Don’t pick that one banana off the bunch, there are enough of them alone,” said the saleswoman to the young man who wanted to pick just one. But he had headphones on and didn’t notice.
“People just don’t buy them, it’s a huge problem to sell a single piece,” she told us later.
We reached out to several other chains to see if individual bananas are really the last ones left in the boxes.
We wrote
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What about them?
“Sometimes we do have individual bananas, but it happens in small quantities. As part of preventing food waste, we put these individual pieces on sale at a discount,” confirmed Renata Maierl, Kaufland network spokesperson, to PrahaIN.cz.
Bananas themselves, for which customers are not interested, are also recorded by Tesco.
“In selected stores, we use high-quality discarded bananas to bake sweet rolls, it is bananas that give the pastry its suppleness and sweetness. This is one of the partial steps by which we reduce food waste in our operation, sustainability is one of the key priorities of Tesco’s business,” added press spokeswoman Iva Pavlousková for our editors.
Tesco also introduced several ways to prevent banana waste. Due to the fact that in overripe pieces the starch has turned into sugar and they are very sweet, there is no need to sweeten dishes made from them.
Baked bananas, banana pancakes or banana muffins are also offered.
They’re baking banana bread in Alberta to cut waste. Last year alone, the chain baked seven thousand sandwiches, for which 1.5 tons of bananas were used, the press department said.
