Why Did Starbucks Stop Selling Fresh Bananas?

Starbucks customers looking for a healthy alternative to the other, often calorie-laden foods sold there may be unhappy to find a handy go-to fruit missing from the store's display case. No longer spotted amidst the charcuterie-like protein boxes and the bottled water, bananas have disappeared from the menu. Customers who could get a single banana for a mere dollar have been disappointed, but the coffee chain has good reasons for eliminating the fruit. And, no, it has nothing to do with the much-worried-over banana shortage of 2024.

In fact, Starbucks stopped selling bananas in 2022, but many people didn't even notice at the time. The company said that the fruit was among the less-popular foods sold by the chain. Faced with poor sales, bananas simply didn't make the cut. However, Starbucks employees have other theories about the fruit's disappearance that often hinges on a combination of the bananas' short shelf life and the flying pests they attract. On Reddit, one alleged Starbucks employee shared that their store would get two dozen bananas and only sell a couple, leaving the rest to go to waste. Another employee in the thread complained about the fruit flies that would proliferate as the bananas sat around.

Many people were less concerned about not being able to eat the bananas now that Starbucks no longer sells them and more concerned about not being able to have them added to drinks. Before they were discontinued, customers could ask for the fruit to be added to blended drinks for an upcharge (though that may not be a huge loss, as there's a scientific reason why this fruit tends to overpower smoothies). 

You may wonder why Starbucks didn't use the overripe bananas to make banana bread. That doesn't quite work, as the coffee giant sources all of its food from an outside vendor and so nothing in the pastry case is made in-house. Take a look around on your next coffee run, and you'll see that stores don't even have a full kitchen.

You can't really blame Starbucks for caring about the bottom line, though. Quick-serve restaurants are notorious for discontinuing items and often breaking the hearts of their customers in the process. Rarely, however, is the product a fruit that can easily be found in any grocery store. Still, we prefer to take our coffee without fruit flies, thanks.