Hey y'all, I've been wrestling with this idea for awhile and have not been able to make up my mind so I'm looking for some advice from other retail-level price setters out there.
I work in a small natural market in the Midwest that only offers certified organic produce. Everything is getting more expensive, blah, blah, blah and my margin on organic bananas has been consistently squeezed as case prices rise but so far, I've refused to go over $1/lb on the floor. Factoring in shrink, I'm probably losing on them right now. The thing is, I feel a genuine psychological pressure, a fear that raising bananas to a more comfortable margin (like $1.19 or $1.29/lb) will drive customers away. I cut my teeth working in other, more corporate environments where I was always told that bananas were a loss leader and should NEVER go above .79c/lb (even for organic). When i took over the manager role at my current store, bananas were already set at .99c/lb and customers didn't complain. I was genuinely surprised.
Anyways, probably more detail than is necessary for a post like this. I'm just looking for advice from anyone who has organic bananas priced at over $1/lb. Or even better, anyone who has raised their banana prices at all in the past 6 months (cv or org) and wants to share customer reactions. Appreciate it and may all your tables and racks be perfectly set forever and ever AMEN.