Five-penny fruit is a rotten idea

A recent lunchtime promotion by Benjys turned out to be a PR banana skin for the sandwich chain.

The company brought in ten tonnes of bananas to sell in a week for just five pence each. But, far from persuading City types to buy into a good deal, many of the banking brigade were suspicious of the crazily cheap offer and thought there was a catch.

Even greengrocers made monkeys out of store management, loading up boxes with Benjys bananas to sell on at a profit.

Benjys chief executive Ian Rickwood says: “Customers thought there must be something wrong with the fruit and many imagined they were doing us a favour by saying we’d mis-priced the bananas.”