- Trader Joe's has raised the price of its bananas from 19 cents after more than 20 years.
- Its bananas now cost 23 cents each — an increase of 21%.
- Some businesses have been scrapping iconic price points, like $1 products at dollar stores and dollar slices at NY pizzerias.
Trader Joe's has ditched its 19-cent bananas.
The retailer is now selling bananas for 23 cents each, its website shows. This is a 20% increase from its previous price point, which it kept for over 20 years.
"We only change our prices when our costs change, and after holding our price for bananas at 19¢ each for more than two decades, we've now reached a point where this change is necessary," a Trader Joe's spokesperson told CNBC.
Unlike many other retailers that sell bananas by weight or prepackaged, Trader Joe's sells them individually.
Former CEO Dan Bane said he introduced the change after speaking to a customer in a store near a retirement complex who decided not to buy prepackaged bananas because she said she "may not live to that fourth banana."
Some iconic price points have been pushed to their limits recently because of higher labor, transport, and commodity costs.
Dollar stores are putting prices up, some New York pizzerias have scrapped dollar slices, and Costco's CFO has recently hinted that its $1.50 hot-dog-and-soda combo might not be around forever.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index shows that bananas, on average, cost 63 cents per pound in February, with only slight variations in price over the past two years.
At the start of 2020, before the pandemic and the associated supply-chain disruptions started, they cost an average of 57 cents per pound, the data shows.
The US accounted for 21.9% of global net imports of bananas in 2023, with Guatemala as its leading supplier, according to a preliminary report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in December.
The report noted that retail prices for bananas in the US in 2023 "remained virtually unchanged from the previous year, highlighting the fierce competition in the United States of America retail market and the role of bananas as a loss leader product."
Some retailers price bananas so low that they make a loss on each one sold, hoping that the prices will lure shoppers into stores and encourage spending on other products.
