For years, Trader Joe’s sold a bag of fresh broccoli florets for the holy grail of prices: $1.99. It was a price so low it felt like a glitch in the Matrix. You’d grab one, half-expecting a tiny Hawaiian-shirted employee to jump out and yell, “Surprise! That’s actually a cauliflower in disguise!”
But then, whispers started. People began noticing that their beloved broccoli had become a cryptid—rare, elusive, and sometimes gone entirely. And when it did show up, the price tag read $2.49. The internet, as it does, lost its collective mind. It was the broccoli equivalent of finding out your favorite indie band signed to a major label.
The Great Broccoli Inflation
Now, fifty cents doesn’t sound like much until you realize that fifty cents is exactly the price of a single Trader Joe’s peanut butter cup. So, in a very real economic sense, your broccoli got fifty cents more expensive because of… peanut butter candy? Probably. That’s economics, baby. Supply and demand, but mostly demand for tiny chocolate cups.
Here’s the weird part: Trader Joe’s broccoli is specifically huge. I’m talking about florets the size of your fist. You buy one bag, and you’re basically feeding a family of four or a very ambitious rabbit. So when the price went up, financial experts—read: people on Reddit—started calculating the “cost per floret.” One user found that each giant tree cost roughly eleven cents. That’s cheaper than the plastic bag you put it in.
