Mission Street’s markets fared well this week in sales, but with temperatures rising above the mid-80s, bananas were blackening and nectarines shriveling at alarming speeds, grocers said.
“The sun burns the fruit, but it’s even worse for the salad. I am running back and forth to our cooler to make sure it doesn’t all go to waste,” Carlos Espejo from Tony’s Supermarket said Wednesday as he peeled away some limp lettuce leaves and threw them into the trash.
A visit to the back of La Loma Supermarket showed its fruits and vegetables suffering a similar fate. “This heat is bad for the business, we are experiencing a lot of loss,” said Juan Medrano, surrounded by crates and boxes of produce.
He picked up an apple from a pile. “See this coffee-colored stain? That was the sun. We can’t sell it anymore.”
His colleague Arturo Arreyge pointed to a big stack of cherry tomatoes in boxes. “Can you imagine our job? We need to go through these box by box, taking out every shriveling tomato!”
Amanda Ngo from Duc Loi Supermarket took extra precautions to save its fresh produce, laying pieces of cardboard over the watermelons and plums to provide some shade. She is thankful for all the refrigerators she has; they save the most delicate fruit. Most of the other stores don’t have them. The heat created other challenges, though. “Yesterday we ran out of ice and water, but luckily we had enough beer!”
