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Amazon's 1.7 Million Free Bananas 'Disrupting' Local Fruit Economy (consumerist.com)
Amazon has transformed businesses including retailing, filmmaking and data storage. But no one anticipated the bananas. It started with a brainstorm from founder and CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon should offer everyone near its headquarters -- not just employees -- healthy, eco-friendly snacks as a public service. After considering oranges, Amazon picked bananas, and opened its first Community Banana Stand in late 2015. However, not everyone is pleased with the ecommerce giant's effort. From a report: Although there is no money in Amazon's community banana stands -- where the company has been offering free fruit to both workers and locals in Seattle since 2015 -- the tech giant's largesse is changing the banana landscape for some nearby businesses. [...] Thus far, the company says it's handed out more than 1.7 million free banana, reports The Wall Street Journal. But while many folks are fans of the free bananas, others say it's changing banana consumption in the community: Some workers say it's harder to find bananas at local grocery stores, while nearby eateries have also stopped selling as many banana as they used to.
They just have to stop doing this, then. I mean, it's tragic when any business is harmed in any way - but this is just too far. The banana eatery business is what this country was built on, and I can't imagine the hardships faced by grocers selling less bananas than normal.
God only approves of food consumption if it's part of a legal financial transaction.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
"Although there is no money in Amazon's community banana stands"
That's ridiculous. There's always money in the banana stand.
There's nothing you have that they can't take away: Absolute zero, Gentle Jack, bottom line.
That is the last thing I need. Hey lets chuck a banana in this box with a 30 lb sack of dog food.. SPLAT! or I'll get a giant damn box with nothing but 300 air packs and frickin banana because the my item shipped form a different warehouse than the bananas. At a minimum my cat will enjoy the box.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
As in, the plural requires an S. I counted at least two instances of "banana" used as the plural. What else about this report is half-assed and slapdash?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
The problem is that it kills competition with an unfair advantage, even thus in this case this is clearly not Amazon's main reason for doing this (unless they're playing 6D evil chess). This is similar to the monopoly problem.
Step 1: provide service for free, pay users to use it, because you've more money and resources than many countries.
Step 2: wait until all smaller competing businesses collapse as they cannot keep up with you paying people to get free stuff.
Step 3: change the service price to now cost 100x more than during the step 1 period.
Imagine if Amazon did this for all fresh products all the time, then directed people to their Amazon Fresh Prime after all competition collapsed?
All:
When I saw the headline of this article I immediately thought of Harry Chapin's song
30,000 pounds of bananas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfFM4Ilt4Rs
Lyrics here:
http://www.metrolyrics.com/30000-pounds-of-bananas-lyrics-harry-chapin.html
Opening stanza:
It was just after dark when the truck started down
The hill that leads into Scranton Pennsylvania.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds (hit it Big John) of bananas.
I log everything I eat... because I'm a data geek. Then one day I noticed I was getting something like only 20% of the potassium I needed. Potassium has a huge number of roles in the body, so being low on it is not good.
So I decided that I'd try to get 100% of the 4700 mg a day you supposedly need, and it's hard. Even supplements typically only contain something like 3% of your RDA. Bananas contain only about 9% of your RDA; even so they're one of the highest potassium common foods. You'd have to eat 11 a day to get the 4700 mg, but that beats taking 33 potassium gluconate pills.
In fact, getting enough potassium is sufficiently tough (and impractical to get through supplementation), you could almost use potassium intake as an overall proxy for dietary quality. I eat a lot of bananas -- typically three or four a day, but I have to eat a huge variety of high potassium foods to hit my target; you can't do it on a single food unless you want to eat ten cups of beans or thirteen cups of yogurt a day. Avocados, when you can get one ripe, are packed with potassium -- almost a thousand gram of it apiece.
Or the nutritional advice you have to eat 4700mg a day is wrong.
I log everything I eat... because I'm a data geek. Then one day I noticed I was getting something like only 20% of the potassium I needed. Potassium has a huge number of roles in the body, so being low on it is not good.
So I decided that I'd try to get 100% of the 4700 mg a day you supposedly need, and it's hard. Even supplements typically only contain something like 3% of your RDA. Bananas contain only about 9% of your RDA; even so they're one of the highest potassium common foods. You'd have to eat 11 a day to get the 4700 mg, but that beats taking 33 potassium gluconate pills.
In fact, getting enough potassium is sufficiently tough (and impractical to get through supplementation), you could almost use potassium intake as an overall proxy for dietary quality. I eat a lot of bananas -- typically three or four a day, but I have to eat a huge variety of high potassium foods to hit my target; you can't do it on a single food unless you want to eat ten cups of beans or thirteen cups of yogurt a day. Avocados, when you can get one ripe, are packed with potassium -- almost a thousand gram of it apiece.
Where are you getting 4700 mg as a RDA? The Mayo clinic says "Because lack of potassium is rare, there is no RDA or RNI for this mineral. However, it is thought that 1600 to 2000 mg (40 to 50 milliequivalents [mEq]) per day for adults is adequate."
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.