Do Grocery Stores Have Fruit Flies?
Fruit flies love every vegetable and fruit on your counter. Interestingly, there are not many fruit flies in grocery stores, unlike what you would normally expect.
So you might wonder, Do Grocery Stores Have Fruit Flies? Grocery stores take the necessary precautions to avoid fruit flies due to the number of losses they might cause.
Fruit flies go after rotten fruit. Consequently, grocery stores are always keen on culling items daily.
Additionally, they maintain cleanliness on the shelves and racks, ensuring any stray produce juices are wiped instantly.
Grocery stores consider the short lifespan of fruit flies that spans for about a week, producing about 500 offspring.This means that they can get out of control easily.
Do Ripening And Decomposing Produce attract fruit Flies?
Yes. There is hardly any stronger smelling thing than over-ripened bananas.
Therefore, if you have over-ripening bananas or other fresh produce hanging on your counter for too long.
It is time you think about disposing of it as it might be causing fruit flies.
Once these flies are attracted to your fruits, they will multiply too fast due to their adaptability and high multiplication rates.
Grocery stores are too keen on the identification of fruits that are close to being overripe. Such fruits are transferred to the juice bar department for value addition.
In this department, the fruit is refrigerated if it is not used immediately. Consequently, the produce department will not have any fruit flies.
In addition to the prevention of fruit flies, this strategy is also handy in reducing waste. However, not all dated or damaged products are repurposed.
This might go to the landfill.
Is It Lawful To Use Pesticides To Kill Fruit Flies In Grocery Stores?
Yes. It is not illegal to use pesticides to kill fruit flies in grocery stores.
However, this is a rare application as it is not easy to control them with either pesticides or insecticides.
Additionally, many grocery stores produce is organically grown and therefore can’t be sprayed with most pesticides.
Consequently, it is advisable to prevent fruit flies instead of controlling them after they invade your store.
It is also common to find workers in the produce department continually enhancing cleanliness and dryness on all surfaces.
This prevents fruit flies from laying eggs and multiplying.
While they do not have to inspect every fruit due to the high turnover of produce, they still have to remove produce that has been spotted or bruised as soon as possible.
This is the strategy I use in my grocery store, and I have seen it work like magic.
Indeed, I recommend all stock be rotated, and bruised, damaged, or overripe fruits are either culled or taken to the juice department for value addition.
This saves me a lot of money that would go to wastage and other secondary measures of fruit flies’ control.
All my employees know that as soon as a fruit fly is spotted, it needs to be followed to see what is attracting it, and then action is taken immediately.
After removing the source, the area is cleaned.
Are Traps Used In Grocery Stores To Kill Fruit Flies?
Yes. Some grocery stores use traps in the back rooms to kill fruit flies.
Naturally, fruit flies and other types of bugs get near the loading docks and the trash compactor.
Consequently, grocery stores use sticky traps and zappers to trap fruit flies. However, you will never see these as they are kept away from areas customers can see them.
When I mentioned the backroom and trash compactor, you have possibly started to think about other departments and sections in the grocery store.
And their number is not small! Indeed, many grocery stores start with a produce department whereby the walls are lined with seafood, meat, bakery, and deli.
The grocery department comes at the center of the store, where wine, beer, beauty, and health products are displayed.
The cashiers and baggers crown the shopping experience.
Can I Get Rid Of Flies In My Grocery Store?
Yes, but it might be a challenging task. Prevention methods are far easier and effective when it comes to tackling the fruit flies’ menace.
As already insinuated, you will not want to have any bruised and overripe produce in your grocery store if you will stay free from fruit flies.
However, if an apple should fall from the counter and get under the shelves, it will start to rot, attracting fruit flies.
As soon as you notice a swarm of flies from beneath a shelf, it is time to begin cleaning! The area will require deep cleaning to avoid more fruit flies from coming.
If you do not clean the area and find the rotten apple, fruit flies will also lay eggs. Consequently, cleaning and bleaching are necessary.
But before you try to kill or eliminate fruit flies, you want to be sure that you are dealing with fruit flies but not gnats.
While fruit flies might range from brown to reddish-brown, gnats are grey to black, although they are a common look-alike.
So, once you establish that you have fruit flies, clean all the surfaces, discarding any rotten or over-ripened fruit.
However, they might not all be eliminated by thorough cleaning. And this is where other methods come in handy.
First, you might want to use apple cider vinegar. Start by filling a bowl or glass with apple cider vinegar.
After this, use a plastic wrap to cover and then seal with a rubber band.
After this, make sure to poke some tiny holes in the top, making it attractive to fruit flies that will get in but never escape.
On the other hand, you can use old beer or wine. Use a bottle of wine or beer that has little wine or beer in it.
This will attract fruit flies inside and but they will not be able to escape through the narrow neck.
Are Grocery Store Fruits As Fresh As They Look?
No. Not necessarily. Let me give you an illustration; I visited a supermarket recently and was taken aback by what I learnt.
While taking a walk around in one of the famous grocery stores, I noticed the apples on display looked magnificent.
These fruits were perfect and appeared as if they had just been harvested from an ideal garden setting!
The apples glistened under a skillfully designed overhead lighting that was displayed with military precision.
Indeed, the apples appeared so polished that I confused them for being fake, meant for marketing display only. So I picked one and found them to be real.
I was amazed, and turning to the somehow confused manager, asked; these are amazing- are they produced locally?
Since it was February, I thought they were imported. The manager replied, ‘Certainly. We rely on our great produce team who take care of our fruit storage. ’
I didn’t have a clue of what that must mean. Well, while the apples got sprayed every night, the real magic was performed long before they arrived in the store.
Apples in North America sometimes ripen between August and September.
When they are slightly unripe, they are picked and sprayed with 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP).
After this spraying, they are waxed, boxed, and stacked on pallets. They are then kept in a cold store for up to one year!
I mean a cool 12 months! And do you know that this spray can be used up to four times on the same lot of apples? That means, well- four years.
That is the scenario when you are buying your freshly-looking apple as it was possibly picked over a year ago.
Consequently, it is hard to say that the apples and other fruits you buy from the grocery store are fresh at all.
Additionally, while the chemically stored fruits look fresh, their nutritional value is wanting. Indeed, the nutritional content deteriorates as they stay under storage.
Can I Eat Fruits With Fruit Flies?
No, eating fruits with fruit flies is not good at all. When fruit flies attack your fruits, they lay eggs on them. These eggs hatch into larvae.
Therefore, eating fruits that are infested with fruit flies is like eating the larvae. And you might get sick from eating the larvae or eggs.
I would recommend that you thoroughly wash fruits before you eat them.
If you notice that fruit flies tear your fruits, it is best not to eat them but to throw them away.
Again, it is essential to note that fruit flies will make your fruits rot faster. They will gobble your fruit, breed, and lay eggs.
All this happens in your natural fruit, causing it to rot at a faster rate. To be on the safe side, I advise you to get fruit flies from your fruit and discard any invaded fruits.
How Do Groceries Store Fruits?
It remains a mystery to many how grocery stores store fruits.
While many grocery stores order large quantities of fruits that would go bad if stored at home, they use several ways to ensure that their fruits remain fresh.
By “fresh,” I do not mean literal freshness as you find with fruits harvested from the samba. I am referring to relative freshness as common to grocery stores.
All grocery stores have large refrigerated areas where most of their fruits are stored. These coolers are in the back room.
Each night, fruits are pulled from the sales floor and put into the refrigerated coolers to stay overnight to extend their shelf life.
Over the night, such fruit is restored where it heads back to the shelves the following morning.
However, some fruits do not need refrigeration as it doesn’t influence or slow down the ripening process.
Essentially, what refrigeration does is slow down the ripening process.
Consequently, fruits whose ripening cannot be slowed down by cooling do not need to be refrigerated, including all citrus fruits and avocados.
Do Grocery Stores Have To Change Their Layout Every Other Time?
Yes. Grocery stores change their layout for a good reason. Most of us indeed go grocery shopping regularly.
Like me, you might have noted that stuff gets moved around now and then. These changes might be quite confusing to most shoppers.
Perhaps you have wondered the real reason behind this. I also wondered, but after some research, I learnt several things.
Grocery stores have small profit margins.
If you add stiff competition from different merchants who offer similar products and services, you will find that grocery stores must strategize on survival techniques.
Due to this desperation, it becomes obligatory for grocery stores to entice customers through various means.
One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by changing their layout every other time.
Additionally, this has been conceived as a way that grocery stores use to make sure that their customers are forced down every aisle so that in the process.
They might do some instant buying that wasn’t initially planned. However, there is still much more about why grocery stores change stuff and how they do it.
Every business loves making as many sales as is practically possible. Indeed, there is no better way for businesses to make an additional profit and expand.
It is indisputable that grocery stores make little profit, to the tune of around 2%.
Practically, this means that in every dollar, their profit is about 2 cents. Therefore, they need to strategize on making their customers buy more stuff.
To succeed in making their customers buy more stuff than they initially planned, they must make these items harder to locate. This way, rearrangement is inevitable.
When you move around looking for the items you left arranged in a particular corner but can’t find them there, you will bump over other items and buy them.
But since you haven’t bought your preferred item as yet, you will continue the search, find more appealing stuff, buy and then locate your item.
Your shopping will be more than what you would have bought if there was no rearrangement of things.
Conclusion
Grocery stores do not have fruit flies as they don’t have overripe fruits. When fruits over ripen, they are made into juice.
On the other hand, the shelves are kept clean, eliminating any possibility of fruit flies breeding.
