In an era of almost unlimited choice, many chains and restaurants are trying to outdo one another with more elaborate or outlandish offerings.
The effort has been even more apparent in a post-pandemic world, where foot traffic is harder to come by and restaurants have to work harder to attract the same amount of attention they earlier might have had from a loyal customer base.
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Take, for instance, the effort by almost every chain that even remotely touches breakfast or coffee to offer some version of Starbucks's (SBUX) -) beloved Pumpkin Spice Latte. Or the attention-grabbing pancake tacos at IHOP, the electric purple Grimace Shake at McDonald's (MCD) -), and Krispy Kreme's (DNUT) -) Barbie movie-inspired Cotton Candy chiller drink and donuts with edible glitter.
Loud advertising and collaboration campaigns work because they're snappy and generate buzz. But a chain is nothing if it can't rely on its routine offerings for a steady stream of customers.
For a chain like Chick-fil-A, that means serving fresh flavorful chicken every day at every location. The same goes for quality sandwiches at Panera and coffee at Starbucks.
Starbucks removes a well-known item
Starbucks seems, however, to have recently eliminated a key customer staple item without much ceremony. Several eagle-eyed customers have noticed that the coffee chain no longer offers frozen or fresh bananas.
The banana, which typically retailed for $1 to $1.50, is still listed on Starbucks's online menu, but a quick trip to one of its outlets confirms that the fruits are in fact no longer on offer where they typically used to be -- toward the front of the store in baskets.
Some employees and customers helped shed light on Reddit as to why the bananas might no longer be offered.
"They were awful. We received frozen bananas that took hours to get slightly soft, and then they'd turn to mush. You would have to blend drinks 4 or 5 times. Nightmares. Circa 2008," one Redditor posted.
"Glad I’m not the only one who has people keep asking about them - they’ve been gone for over a year and not a single person has asked about them until now," another wrote.
"I used to get my morning banana at Starbucks. I miss them. I never had them ended in anything," one customer wrote.
One employee shed light on how time-consuming and work-intensive the process was for bananas, which rarely sold out at stores.
"Ours were never frozen luckily, but they would turn into mush super fast too, especially if you didn't rip open the bag within the box they delivered them in. & if you didn't rip open the bag, I they would get weirdly slimy even though they were still in the peels," they wrote.
"We were also supposed to pre-peel them (with gloves on) during our opening tasks & put them in this stupid container, & we had a designated set of banana tongs that we were supposed to use to pick them up."
TheStreet has reached out to Seattle-based Starbucks for comment.
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