Our Promotions Director, Phil Evans, got a square watermelon from Urban Fare delivered to his desk yesterday.
Watermelons are supposed to make people happy. Remind us of our youth. Send thoughts of dribbling juice running down our chin through our heads and have us imagining how far we can spit the seeds.
Instead, this watermelon has Phil pissed. Actually, it has me pissed too.
Here’s the blurb on attached to the fruit.
From around the world and around the corner, Urban Fare delivers the finest selection of fresh and exotic gourmet produce. By popular demand, we’re pleased to bring back square watermelons and Urban Fare is the only place in North America where you will find them. This rare and exotic fruit was carefully cultivated and grown in Japan, and has been imported exclusively for Urban Fare customers. Pick up this gem of a melon and make your next barbecue or summer picnic the most memorable in years.
Yup, it’s a watermelon grown in a box in Japan, placed on a boat, shipped across the Pacific and then placed on a shelf at prissy grocery stores where it is sold for … $99.
Watermelon is pretty much one of the cheapest things you can buy. 29c a pound sound like a good price? 39c? Well these origami marvels are pretty heavy, maybe 6 pounds? That makes ‘em $15/pound. Nice markup huh?
But that’s not the thing that’s pissing Phil and I off. It’s the fact there are damn fine melons grown on our farmlands. You know, melons that aren’t weighing down ships crossing the Pacific and spewing smoke.
I don’t want to go all Al Gore on your family reunion, but what’s the carbon footprint of a square sumo sized watermelon vs a goofy football shaped one from Chilliwack?
Not to mention the confusion of how you eat one.
I know how to eat round ones, but how do you eat a square one? How do you bite off chunks and pretend you have a smiley face?
It’s kind of like the Diamond Shreddies. It’s wrong. Shreddies are square, watermelons are footballs.
I used to think these vanity items were quirky and cute, but it’s 2008. I shudder at the produce aisle when I see pears from Australia or strawberries from California. I’m no environmental nazi, but when I can buy local, I will - it’s the smarter, healthier, tastier way of doing things.
So why is Urban Fare selling square watermelons? Because there are only 400 available for the entire world! Ooooh.
Go ahead, buy one for $99 and let me know if they taste better.
Wait - Phil’s got one on his desk .. oops - no he doesn’t he just sold it on eBay.
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Here’s another way to look at it..
http://www.financialhack.com/2007/12/04/10145_lessons-of-the-square-watermelon.html
@rebecca
while i appreciate the creativity at conserving shelf space in japan, i just dont see the rationale behind shipping a $100 vanity watermelon across the ocean to vancouver.
it’s a watermelon! do we really need a square watermelon to demonstrate our hip superiority to our friends?
i mean, if they’re so cool, why can’t we just grow them like that here?
I agree with you about the ridiculousness of importing these fruit, Buzz. It screams novelty and big carbon footprint to me. I’m disappointed that Urban Fare bought into the hype.
Even if North American consumers and businesses *needed* square watermelons (let’s say for reasons similar to the space constraints in Japan as Rebecca’s link reports), it makes more sense to have local growers adopt the necessary methodologies to shape them like that in North America.
Personally, I wouldn’t shell out $100 on shoes, let alone an angular watermelon.
Big carbon footprint? If they’re ship-shipped (which appears to be standard for all but the most delicate fresh produce) the carbon footprint per watermelon may be more for the trip from the warehouse in Richmond to the store than it is from Japan to Vancouver.
The secret is volume: the biggest container ships carry 7000 containers at a time, and note that a standard (2 TEU) container is 40′x8′x8′. So one container can carry, hm, let’s pretend it’s 1 cubic foot, because that’s close and convenient.
So roughly 2400 watermelons will fit in a container, which is something like 1/7000 of the container ship’s cargo capacity.
That ship would use about 350 metric tons of diesel fuel per day, and take about 15 days to make the Japan-Canada trip.
yadda yadda, the melon on Phil’s desk consumed about 0.3 kg of diesel fuel on its trip from japan, which is about 0.35 litres of gas. How fuel-efficient is the car you drove to the grocery store, or to work for that matter?
Lessons to be learned: math is hard, but vital. Ships are more fuel-efficient than cars. Do not be deceived by your visceral sentiments.
[...] friend and local media personality Buzz Bishop had an interesting post regarding Urban Fare’s square watermelons, imported from [...]
No, a vanity watermelon is NOT needed to impress our friends..
I impress my friends with my BMW, my Manolo Blahniks, my Prada bag, and 2 Karat Diamond engagement ring.
All waste of money in my opinion…
So, if people are impressed with this crap they adorn themselves with…why WOULDN’T they be impressed with this.
Some…people…are…idiots. Lets face it.
Re: Ryan Cousineau and “Big Carbon Footprint?”
There were apparently only 400 available for North America, so it hardly seems like they’re saving the shipping costs eh? Did they put ‘em in containers alongside Mazda’s?
Plus they had to be shipped from the square watermelon factory in Japan to the ship - and then taken off and shipped to the stores in North America.
That seems like larger carbon footprint than a truckload from Chilliwack. Thank God for little pleasures like Fiji Spring Water.
Diamond shreddies are hilarious
I was at Urban Fare the other day and while I thought the square watermelon was fun and worth a second look, I blinked several times when I saw the price tag. Come On!! I think the reason they are sending them to promotion departments is because nobody is buying them. Who would? By the way they have one that is cut in half and the inside is yellow not watermelon red and it looks very pulpy. Smart of Phil to sell it on eBay. At least diamond shreddies are the same price as regular shreddies.
Phil: short version? You’re probably wrong. Your belief that a shipment of melons couldn’t fit in a refrigerated container with a full container’s worth of other perishable stuff is the most charmingly naive view of how shipping works that I’ve read this week.
Long version? A consumer can swamp the logistical “carbon footprint” of this melon with their method of getting the melon home, assuming certain fairly plausible parameters for how they get to the store and how far they traveled.
Slate recycles the analysis of how stuff gets moved, this time in a discussion of Netflix DVDs.
Anyone that buys a square watermelon is an idiot.
You can grow them yourself, just grow the melon in a square plexiglass container.
They’ve been doing this since the early 80’s.