Monday, July 27, 2009
Produce and Fireworks
On my way back from Charlotte on Saturday morning, I stopped and picked up some locally grown peaches. I find it interesting that every peach stand also doubles as a fireworks stand. All the roadside produce stands up by TR towards Asheville that I could think of also double as fireworks stands. So my question is, what is it about fresh produce that makes people want to blow stuff up? I guess there is just something about a fresh picked peach that makes people what to shoot copious amounts of gunpowder, sulphur and cheap packaging into the atmosphere. In reality, they are both seasonal items so I can see economically that it makes sense as you can get more sales volume, prolong your sales timeline and you are hedging your bets against a drought or bad growing season with the fireworks. So I understand having two different seasonal items in the same store/stand. But how about a non-seasonal item? Or something other than fireworks? I guess it's just easy, someone did it and make a decent living so now everyone is doing it. To me, fireworks are risky. Fire risk and safety considerations aside, I would think that fireworks sales are just as unpredictable and fickle as peach sales. If it were me, I'd want at least one of my stand/store offerings to be a stable business that had a certain amount of guaranteed cash flow. So, maybe there is something about produce that makes people want to buy/shoot off fireworks after all.