One of Trader Joe’s most popular products has just gotten its first-ever price increase.
The popular grocery store chain recently raised the price of its individually-sold bananas by roughly 20%, to 23 cents from 19 cents.
Trader Joe’s bananas have cost 19 cents apiece since the chain first started selling them individually back in 2001. The never-changing price tag became a selling point for the fruit, with signage at some Trader Joe’s locations boasting about the store’s refusal to increase the cost of potassium-rich produce.
The 19-cent bananas have proved so popular over the years that they recently made the Trader Joe’s Product Hall of Fame.
In a statement to CNBC Make It, a representative for the brand said that the new price “still represents a tremendous everyday value for bananas.”
“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,” they said.
The spokesperson noted that although banana prices were going up, the price of other produce items such as romaine hearts, bell peppers and green onions have all gone down.
Trader Joe’s didn’t always sell its bananas individually. The grocer used to sell them by the pound like other retailers, but because its stores don’t have scales, the bananas were weighed and packaged in its warehouse.
In the first-ever episode of the “Inside Trader Joe’s” podcast, then-CEO Dan Bane said that changed when he noticed an elderly woman browsing the bananas but not buying any. Bane approached her and asked why she didn’t take a bag of them.
“She said to me ‘Sonny, I may not live to that fourth banana,'” he said on the 2018 episode. “And so we decided the next day we were going to sell individual bananas. And they’ve been 19 cents ever since.”
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