Perfect Peel®

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes:  Besmirched!  I couldn’t agree more, Jerry.  “HATE” is too tame a word for how I feel about those things.  I grew up on an APPLE FARM so I actually have a bit of relevant insight here.  See, back in the day there were no stickers on fruit because there was no technology for it.  After somebody came up with a sticker-application gizmo that made it easy (and cheap) to plaster them all over the place, it became de rigueur to have them on apples and pears and peaches and tomatoes – indeed, on just about everything fruity over the size of a blueberry.   Pretty soon, before we knew what hit us, the lemming instinct took over (at least among fruit farmers):   “Hey, everybody else has these stickers on their fruit. The technology makes it so easy (and cheap) to put them on there.  So, WHY NOT?”

One small ray of hope:  If enough of us yell loud enough, eventually some enterprising marketer – maybe someone who paid attention during the early stages of the ORGANIC and local-vore craze – will realize there’s a niche for catering to sticker-hating fruit consumers.  Pretty soon he (or she) will begin marketing STICKER-LESS fruit (spoiler alert, this next bit coming up is key) at a higher price point from the regular sticker-bearing varieties.  I am here to tell you, people will gladly pay it.   And not just because we want freedom from those damnable stickers marring the peels of our Granny Smiths.   No, we’ll pay extra because – just like with ORGANIC, and just like with local-vore – it feeds into our inherent, universal, snob instinct. Call it the anti-lemming effect if you wish – but it’s real, it’s powerful, and it’s out there in the free market just waiting to be exploited. I even have a name for this new sticker-free fruit product. It’s a name I’m willing to share with the world free of charge:  Let’s call it “Perfect Peel ®.”  Best of all? There’s no new technology needed this time around.  Just put up a big hand-lettered sign, “ONLY PERFECT PEEL® PRODUCE SOLD HERE.”  Then, sit back and watch the added $$’s roll in.

C’mon all you anti-sticker peel-snobs.  Our time has come!  Maybe we can’t change the world on any of the truly big-ticket issues of our time.  But here is one place where, together, we can make a difference.  Waddayasay, eh?  Operators are standing by….

You know, somebody could make a mint here.  I say, it might as well be me.