18 December 2010

Disgusting peaches at Coles Chisholm

18 December 2010 | Monster of the Deep

I’ve become used to buying mouldy onions, rancid potatoes, fruit that rots within two days of purchase, and wilted/slimy vegetables. But today when we visited Coles at the Chisholm shops I encountered a display of rotting peaches covered in insects. They were flying all over the place and crawling on other fruit nearby. About 50% of the peaches in the display looked like this.

Please excuse the colours in the photo, it was taken with my old mobile phone. But despite the non-peachy colours, you can see how gross, brown and rotten that fruit is.

Now, I know Chisholm and surrounds are a lower income suburbs, as posted about on the RiotACT earlier, but are we really expected to buy this crap, let alone eat it?

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erma10:43 pm 26 Jan 11

deezagood said :

miz said :

There’s a good fruit and veg shop at Chisholm – go there, instead!

Miz – I would have agreed with you once. The bad news is that the fruit shop @ Chisholm has recently changed management, and the quality is woeful. I literally could not find one semi-decent piece of fruit there during my last visit. I used to get all of my fruit and veg there, but not any more. I suspect they’ll go out of business very shortly, as many of my friends have made the same observation and no longer shop there.

I have to agree with this. They used to have great produce, but not so any more.

beejay766:44 am 22 Dec 10

“The idea that the major supermarkets sell sub-standard fruit and veg is urban myth i’m afraid. It’s kind of cute and cuddly to think otherwise but the reasons the majors will always be better include;

turnover, they sell tons of the stuff, it never sits on the shelf long

quality, their market dominance means they can bully suppliers for best of the best, woolies doesn’t buy carrots that aren’t perfectly straight, crisp and uniform length

logistics, the majors get to point of sale faster, some may be stored for out of season sale but that’s o.k.

price, obviously

wastage, the majors can afford to discard ageing fruit and veg and absord the cost.”

Hahaha! It’s not the shelf that’s the problem, mate. It’s the eons spent out back and in massive distribution warehouses. You want fresh, you don’t go to a supermarket. You go to a greengrocer!

As to quality, the carrots that look the straightest aren’t necessarily the best. Neither are the biggest strawberries the best, nor the most perfectly oval potatoes. Ask any home gardener. The best fruit and veg is the freshest and (a little out there, I know) the best *tasting*.

Stuff doesn’t necessarily get to point-of-sale faster. It gets to distribution warehouses faster. It then gets doled out over God knows how long.

Low price does not necessarily equal high quality.

Yes, they can afford more wastage. They can also afford to sell crap because people will generally suck it up in the quest for convenience.

When I lived in Sydney I used to shop at Flemington Markets. Most of the stuff there (on Saturday’s open-to-the-public days) was picked earlier the same day by the farmer who was selling it to you. I gotta tell you, it didn’t even bear any resemblance to the crap sold at supermarkets. Perhaps you don’t do a lot of fruit and veg shopping, but when you buy from a supermarket it doesn’t last long. When I bought, for example, pak choy from Flemington, I could use it any time in a week. When I buy pak choy from any supermarket anywhere, it’s a strictly same-day affair. By the following day it’s starting to go yellow. Presumably this means either a) it’s already a week old, or b) it’s been appallingly stored.

spinact8:54 pm 20 Dec 10

Canberran’s are turning into a bunch of whining little bitches and I’m sick and tired of it………………….damn it

troll-sniffer12:04 pm 20 Dec 10

Hey JB~!

Along with the Mully Cup, can we have an new award? Biggest fricken storm in the smallest fricken teacup?

Is it becoming a normal thing for people to notice something really petty that they could easily fix by contacting the nearest responsible person, and broadcast to the world that this terrible event, an event likely to cause carnage in society if left unchecked, could consume society as we know it if something isn’t done about it?

Well, something could have been done about it without wasting perfectly good pixels on my screen with such an inane and pointless post. Alert the nearest employee… or if that’s too difficult, mention to the checkout chick on the way out that there’s some rotting peaches and someone should take a look at it. Not too hard. Hmmmm… another business venture coming up for CeeJ, ‘Positive Action Modules for Whingers’, a course how to do something about a problem rather than just whinge like a spoilt child, three weeks, $2200.

Ian10:08 pm 19 Dec 10

Chances are all that happened is something went wrong between supplier and store, some pimply faced teenager stacked the fruit on the display, couldn’t be stuffed noticing it was rotting. Easily fixed – tell one of the staff politely, if you don’t get the desired response ask to see the manager and tell them.

shadow boxer2:16 pm 19 Dec 10

The idea that the major supermarkets sell sub-standard fruit and veg is urban myth i’m afraid. It’s kind of cute and cuddly to think otherwise but the reasons the majors will always be better include;

turnover, they sell tons of the stuff, it never sits on the shelf long

quality, their market dominance means they can bully suppliers for best of the best, woolies doesn’t buy carrots that aren’t perfectly straight, crisp and uniform length

logistics, the majors get to point of sale faster, some may be stored for out of season sale but that’s o.k.

price, obviously

wastage, the majors can afford to discard ageing fruit and veg and absord the cost.

Ryan11:52 am 19 Dec 10

Unfortunately you’re always going to have some bad produce, but you will encounter it more often in supermarkets given that it is generally delivered in the same trays that are used in displays, rather than being packed by hand onto the displays as the fruit shops would.

It’s this time saving measure that does eliminate quality control somewhat. For me personally it doesn’t reflect so much on the quality or standards of the store, but each to their own.

For the record, I work for the competition too.

facet11:01 am 19 Dec 10

Fruit goes off quicker if customers squeeze it and then put it back especially avocados.
I say keep your hands off my firm ripe peaches.

astrojax8:18 am 19 Dec 10

Rangi said :

The fruit and veg from Aldi seams to last longer

chemicals…

taninaus7:50 am 19 Dec 10

Monster – it may not be your job but it is not hard to have a quiet word with a supervisor to let them know of the problem. You don’t have to make a scene like MrsD1ngo suggested. It is wrong that they didn’t notice such an obvious problem – the flies should have been a give away – but it is a bit busy for them at the moment. Personally I haven’t had any dramas with fruit I have purchased there going off any quicker than any other retailer.

The time it would have taken to say something would have been far less than the time it has taken to post and respond to this message.

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