While there have been very few silver linings to the coronavirus pandemic, one that has emerged is a massive over-supply of cheap avocado in supermarkets at the moment.
It makes sense if you think about it, with millennials well-known for loving buying smashed avo on toast from cafes instead of saving for housing deposits.
According to Pedestrian, between 10% and 20% of all avocado sales in Australia usually go straight to cafes, restaurants and the hospitality business in general. Obviously that’s not happening now, what with the wide-spread closures of heaps of small businesses including cafes.
In addition, plenty of Aussie avos that are usually exported are finding their way to stores near you.
So what’s the result of all of this? Well there’s a surplus of avos in supermarkets and they’re cheaper than ever!
“It’s quite a lot of fruit that’s struggling to find a market at the moment,” CEO of Avocados Australia John Tyas said.
“What would normally be being exported at the moment is also going on to the domestic market simply because of the lack of freight opportunities.”
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The other reason for the current avo abundance is that when people first began panic buying, they ignored fresh produce like fruit and veggies in favour of non-perishable foods like pasta, rice, soup, canned goods and more.
“We are seeing an abundance of fruit in retailers at really good value at the moment, so retailers are really trying to move as much as they can through stores,” said Tyas. “We saw a big rush on things like pasta and rice at the expense of some of the higher value, perishable products like avocados.”
The only potential bad news to come out of this scenario is that most of the avocados available are the Shepard variety, which doesn’t seem to be first choice for many Hass-loving Australians.
Personally I disagree, as does Tyas. “I’d encourage people to have another go at the at the humble Shepard, because it really is a great product.”
