Are These Strawberries Worth $1 EACH? (Bowery Farms Strawberries) 

If you enjoyed this video about a strawberries that were $15 a box, check out this strawberry I had in Japan that was $15 EACH ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gUC-4klLSIc.html

Truth be told, I'd try the first berry without reading the flavor note card. They're trying to get you to imagine tastes that aren't there.

I had a tour of one of Bowery's locations as I had applied for an internship. It's very clean inside the sorting facility - you have to put on a full body suit, beard net/hair net, shoe covers, goggles, etc. Then you step into the sorting area where leafy greens are checked for quality and pushed into containers by people. It's manual. You have multiple mats that are like sponges - when you step on them, they release disinfectant. Of course you can't leave or enter the area without washing your hands. There's a big room for refrigerating the already packaged veggies. I didn't see any strawberries at that facility, but I saw the vertical farm walled off inside the sorting area with glass panels. It's dark with racks of light, where all the plants are sorted by age. I wasn't able to go into the farm. The workers that I did see in there were moving small forklifts around. I would say that overall, it's underwhelming. The price is only worth the cleanliness of the facility, the manual labor, and the assurance of no pesticides.

Natural sunlight tends to make sprouts (mustard, radish, brocoli) have a stronger flavor over artificial light. Now since the strawberries are grown in a vertical farm with UV light, I assume that it’s causing the flavors to not be intense as a locally grown one from a farmer’s market. I think they’ll have better success if they grew alpine strawberries or varieties known to be pack full of flavor

Those Strawberries look like video game sprites. I don't like it when companies upcharge so much for a bougie market to capitalize on people that are ignorant of high quality foods you can find in a farmers market for cheaper

I have eaten all kinds of strawberries and it's not the most expensive ones that are necessarily better in flavor or sweetness. I've had absolutely fantastic strawberries in Pakistan (locally grown) and they cost $1.5 per kg! Yes, that's how cheap they are during the season. The ones grown are typically of very dark color at the bottom (dark maroon) with 25% top part being yellow. Not very tart or extremely sweet but with a very strong strawberry flavor. I've also had expensive ones from other parts of the world and they were kind of average. So yes, in fruits sometimes, expensive is not always better. Your video reminded me of just that! Keep churning out these awesome fruit stories.

I dig the packaging which is reminiscent of two-flavor Nerds candy.

The best strawberries I've ever had were wild strawberries from my backyard. They are so sweet and not too tart, and about the size of a quarter.

The trick behind very sweet strawberries is cool climate. In a greenhouse/indoor this is relatively easy to achieve with climate control if necessary but in some parts of the world it's just natural, it's why strawberries from Scotland, Scandinavia etc are very sweet and well regarded. Marketing is marketing though and these berries at that ridiculous price are 99.99% marketing. The commercial tricks to growing 'good' strawberries are well known at this point, anyone and anywhere can do it although some geographical regions have distinct advantages. It's not worth $30/pound though.

your conclusion was really elegantly put! i'm glad that people are investing into vertical farming, and i hope these expensive ~trendy~ products open the door to more & better options (i assume that as more people do the Thing it will get more streamlined/cheaper). weirdly my only barrier to farmer's marketing these days is that all the atms near where i live are freakin broken, and most of the sellers only take cash lol ty for the Frontline Fruit Journalism

Oregon Hoods have always been my favorite, but you never see them outside of the state because they are too delicate to transport significant distances. Pink Panda strawberries are also very intriguing, tiny berries with pink flowers and a concentrated sweetness to them. Definitely recommend both types of you ever get the opportunity to try :)

Honestly the best strawberries I’ve ever had are the Ozark Beauty variety my mom grows. They are literally like candy and super juicy. And I get those for free 😂

The best tasting strawberries are found grown in northern scandinavia close to the arctic circle, 20+ hours of sunlight per day, moderate temperatures (slow growth) and no need for pesticides creates incredibly tasty and sweet strawberrys, those grown in southern Chile are almost equally good as I found to my surprise.

$30/pound sounds like a sucker townie price. Same way brown shelled eggs are overpriced when there is zero difference from white shelled eggs.

Something a lot of businesses no longer do is focus groups and blind tastings. Their whole stated objective was nothing more than "glittering generalities." I am glad you called them out and also glad you gave a fair and impartial review. The market (pretty much in all sectors) is lacking the vetting we once had. You provide a critical service to consumers with these more practical reviews.

Driscolls are pretty good when they're in season in the US. When they have to ship them from Mexico they taste like nothing tho

Have you ever heard of Wongai Berries? I was watching an episode of 60 Minutes Australia this morning when I ran across it. The Wongai berry grows on some islands in the Torres Straight. As soon as the berry was mentioned I thought of you. I also checked to see If you had done a video on it. The title of the video is "How Three Children Survived Being Stranded on a Deserted Island". the date of the episode is December 6, 2021. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

I can't remember the last time I bought strawberries, but I am pretty sure that I was disappointed. I've been growing my own for the last 22 years, from an original pack of six plants in three varieties, though I just transferred a heap of plants when I moved 12 years ago. They're never more than give hours off the plant when eaten.

"pollinated by bees" means they buy 100's of 1,000's of farmed bumblebees which are released in their warehouse, spend 3 weeks flying around looking for a way out, then die. How natural.

Hydroponically raised produce is typically less flavorful. Soil raised produce will typically have more flavor consistently

I live in a place strawberries are produced so for me probably not at that price. They probably are good though. Most mass produced produce are picked for shelf stability not flavor first.

I got Driscolls in my fridge right now. Some of the berries in this batch are actually worth saving the seeds for. There is another berry brand that the local market here occasionally carries. They market their berry as what strawberries are supposed to taste like. Those are worth a high price. But they were pretty reasonable. Wish I could remember the brand name.

Excuse my pessimism, but $30 for 1lbs. of strawberries does not exactly scream; "successful business model". They could taste like the teardrops of angels, it ain't worth it.

I strongly believe that if a 'sustainable' product is not accessible to the majority of people- usually through price point or distribution, then it is not sustainable insofar as it has no meaningful impact on displacing unsustainable products/practices. It's not helping the planet, it's just helping financially comfortable people feel good about themselves.

Gem branded strawberries I've had a good amount of luck with, sometimes they don't have much taste but most of the time they are flavorful, I even found some with distinct cantaloupe & strawberry flavor which became my favs so far.

Best strawberry I ever had was out of my garden they were tiny and delicious and smelled sooooo good

This dude has traveled all over the world and has had x100 of the foods than I have. If he said they're good and money is no object at the time, I think I'll go buy them haha.

one thing that has always confused me is why it seems like fragaria x ananassa is the only strawberry species grown commercially - there are so many species, like the musk strawberry, green strawberry, alpine strawberry, beach strawberry, or virginia strawberry that grow prolifically and have great flavour. customers going for new varieties of fruit (here in the uk, for example, sugarloaf pineapple has become massively popular since hitting mainstream supermarket shelves last year) proves that there's a market for these obscure species - so why are varieties with worse flavour still at the forefront of the commercial fruit market??

They should have renamed them hipster berries. If they put them in a cheap recycled card board package they could bring the price down by half. $15 ....naw..$10/lb nope 7.99lb maybe

I doubt it will ever be less expensive. Here's the thing... Once they know people will pay $30/lb they won't ever lower the price. It's a similar strategy that the music industry had when they went from tapes to CDs. They said that the CDs would be roughly a quarter to half as expensive as tapes while delivering superior quality. That never happened. They did offer better quality, but knowing they could charge a little more than a tape and get away with it they never dropped the price. Same here. If they can charge what they charge now and sell them, they never will lower the price. There's no incentive to do so.

i can understand why these are so expensive, first you have to run a complete system to support them which is expensive to buy and to run. You need lighting and plants need a ton of light to produce and that means tons energy which is expensive, especially if you consider that leds convert only 40-50% into the energy into light and a leave only converts ~ %5 of the light that hits the leaves into energy. You would probably need a cooling/ventilation system as well because the leds convert the rest of the energy into heat and the strawberries need co2. A Farmer doesn't have to worry about this since he grows his fruit outside where there is plenty of air(which has to much co2 in it anyways) and sun. And we should not forget its made by a startup, which usually struggle to break even when the investment money runs out and therefore need to have a huge profit margin

Vertical farming highest cost component is energy. With today's energy price, I'm not sure how they can continue to make sense vs outdoor/greenhouse growers.

lol the prices say everything. imagine paying those prices as the norm for everything.

Living soil is very important. I'd expect they're doing hydroponics with how those vertical beds look and your response on flavor.

They should pay YOU for inflicting that poem on your poor soul

I kind of suspect they chose a less flavorful variety of garden strawberries in order to highlight the flavor of the wild ones. It's and unusual marketing tactic but I can see how, when paired with the correct marketing strategy, it could serve to provide a significant boost to future sales of the wild variety.

Hey, Jared. Can you do a review of vertical greenhouse grown tomatoes vs regular farm tomatoes? In my local grocery store, I found they had both kinds being sold at the same price right next to eachother. They weren’t advertised/marketed differently, I just recognized the company name on the stickers of the vertically grown tomatoes. To me, they seemed much juicier, tangier, and flavorful than regular tomatoes, but they were also very fragile and easily bruised or their skin cracked (because of the pressure of all the contained juice). I think the main difference is that they were harvested much riper. They tasted kind of like homegrown tomatoes, but even juicier.

Best strawberry I ever had was about the size of my fingernail. It was wild, and therefore free.

I will stick to a wild kind it may be smaller but wow it carry's a punch of what a true straw berry should be and they are free from the mountains and t grows wild .and it taste just like what a strawberry should taste. And they are free. they dont cost 15.00 .

Plant City , FL strawberries, usually available Dec-March

i live on the strawbery line. they used to grow sweet little strawberies and pop them on the train to wimboldon and the other summer events overnight. though the strawbery fields are mostly gone as are the train stations, but i remember picking our own when i was little and the strawberies were wonderfull, juicy, small and sweet. rarely find them as tasty now

I think it's important to keep nutritious and flavourful fruit open to everyone, we really shouldn't turn fresh produce into a gimmic.

love your channel bro! KEEP EM COMING!

What an upside down world we live in

We have wild strawberries here in the PNW and they're super tiny with the biggest punch of flavor. I loved them as a child and wondered if they be as good 40 years later..and they really are.

The $15-20 Japanese fruit is always worth the experience every once in a while. Best berries I've had were from a farmers market outside the train station in Mainz Germany, by the time I got to Zurich the bag had two inches of juice in it. They were amazing and not $15....

i enjoyed how genuinely disappointed he was with the strawberry when it seemed like he was going to be blow away before he took the bite.

I really enjoyed your honest and thoughtful critique

I grow strawberries for fun. A truth I have come to accept with them is 1 out of 10 strawberries taste like heaven on earth. The rest never live up to that taste and you spend your whole time looking for it.

Coming from Northern California with multiple strawberry farms within biking radius of me, I definitely feel like the local strawberries I get are pretty good. I'm sorry to say that immediately I assumed that your typical strawberry was a grocery store one, which I think definitely contributed to your opinion that that $30 single berry was the best you'd ever tasted.

Best strawberry I've ever had were the super tiny ones that I planted in my yard. Small, yes. But superduper strawberry flavor

You should come to central Florida during strawberry season. Pick your own strawberries perfectly ripened on the vine. Best I've ever had. I've picked some the size of small apples/tangerines.

I want to own a vertical farm one day. I used to do the aerogarden - happy you're highlighting vertical farms - I'm super invested in these!

Indoor farming pollinated by bees. That would be quite the sight seeing them release the bees into the building

I can see a future where we can buy a shipping-container sized hydroponics farm that is fully automated that only requires a hookup for water, power, and a supply of seeds. We're not there yet, but it's an interesting possibility for growing food in the middle of nowhere, like in Antarctica.

Growing indoors with artificial light is always going to be more expensive unless there is a major breakthrough in lighting technology or energy generation. A totally unexpected, paradigm-changing breakthrough. With the fuel price crisis this will get even more expensive. There are plenty of outdoor growers who do spectacularly good strawberries. I have had locally grown, fully ripe Sweet Eve and Cambridge Favourite that are the platonic ideal of strawberry, for normal organic strawberry prices.

in Alaska we would get tiny wild strawberries on the side of the road...like fingernail sized and the flavor was so potent you could chop 10 of them up and flavor a batch of pancakes for 4 ppl

"Why do berries in ground when can do berries in building!" The brains on these guys.

I got strawberries from a farmer's market in San Fran. They were small, but extremely fragrant... I still think about those strawberries from time to time.

I grew hydroponic strawberries in my living room - they lasted a while and were really tasty. I went with alpine strawberries. Unfortunately, something went wrong with them and they died recently. Still figuring it out!

The best strawberries I've ever eaten are grown by a little Hispanic family in Bakersfield, CA and sold out of a plywood stand on the side of Rosedale Highway. They're big, contain no white, and are ridiculously juicy. Eating them requires a sink. My grandma has been making jam out of them for 30 years and whenever I go back in the summer, that stand is one of my first stops. A small carton of them is around $6 and worth every penny.

Probably more than half the cost is electric bill to grow that stuff inside a building.....

This year my allotment produced three pounds of strawberries. All I had to do was pick them. Unfortunately the conserve fermented in the fridge so I lost half of it :(

I’m blessed to live near a couple of strawberry farms, and they are amazing. They will spoil you.

I want you to review the Little Scarlet strawberry. I think you'll have to go to England during harvest and help harvest.

If they could manage to get the taste of a real wild strawberry they’d be on to something.

Bowery, if you're listening, definitely consider doing 7 or 8 in one of those pink boxes, for like 4$. That i could see in a grocery store and people being willing to buy it

Hood Strawberries in oregon during June/July. Admittedly, this season wasn't the best, but when the season is good, they're like little candied strawberries.

Yeah, what's with the crunch of the Driscoll's berry? I noticed that in the last couple of years. I don't think strawberries had a crunch prior. I also noticed the crunchy one lasts longer. GM?

This deserves a million views

Vertical farming has many advantages. Especially reduced water usage. I hate companies that make it out to just be a "trend".

£2 for a large punnet of British strawberrys are they are real good.

That remains my problem, overall. We should be going for these being the norm for price, not overpriced for actually being good!

I grow my own strawberries and they are better than any store bought strawberries. Still wouldn't pay a dollar a piece for them. Grown in NJ and pollinated by bees too.

Not a fan of companies creating their own private cultivars. Driscolls does the same iirc. Its their own custom breed.

Hey! Great video! Check out Oishii. The omakase berry is great. It’s suuuuuper expensive though. You should be able to find them at Whole Foods I think. Just to be clear though, I don’t work for the company or anything, I just thought it was interesting that this place is right next to the Bowery farm. Keep up the great work, your videos as always are super interesting and entertaining.

Friggin azz funny on presentation. Xcellent vid!!

You must try Norwegian strawberries sold in June-August each year. Its just outofthisworld good!

In Australia we get 6 strawberries per punnet. Last week the punnet were $6, this week they've come down to $3.50. So strawberries here aren't always a dollar each, but I'd say more often than not, regular supermarket strawberries cost as much as your expensive ones. During the season they can be as little as a dollar a punnet and I know I've paid $12 a punnet in previous years.

If they sold them separately both me and my gf said we'd be more interested in buying one of them at 7/8 dollars instead of both at 15.

Wait till regular strawberries get soft and almost overripe and they're amazing

I'll watch for these at Aldi's.............

I really liked this video Jared. Like how you compared the different sources of strawberries and explained the Bowery.. i really appreciate your great sense of humor too! Long time viewer..i should move to patreon level😏

Strawberries are such good-looking fruits ❤🍓

i also feel like the japanese one makes more sense, cuz it's like a gift giving thing. people don't necessarily buy it just to eat it afaik.

my neighbour runs an organic strawberry farm with mostly Polka and I get to pick all I want straight from the plants, and by your description I think all 3 kinds of strawberries were an offense against strawberries.

Okay I'm gonna say it... Home grown strawberries (or fruits and vegetables in general!) are THE best. No doubt. What you put your own love into, are always going to be something special.

I love fresh grown strawberries here in central Newfoundland. I go to a u pick and eat so many as I pick lol I always give whatever change is in my purse too besides what I'm paying for what I pick. So if I need to pay $15 for a bucket full, I end up giving $20. We make freezer jams, and freeze them for year-round enjoyment. In saying that, fruits and vegetables are insanely expensive here!

Here in the Shenandoah Valley we just walk along the road to find food.

I'm from Germany and have to say, the best strawberries I ever had, were the ones bought at the market at Eumsong in South Korea. A full stage, normal price and every single one the strawberry you dream of.

For strawberries I always find that the flavor is better when it is grown further north.

The first thing I think about when buying fruit is was it farmed by a new york city executive in a new jersey apartment? And then pass.

Had to pause the video and coment on the background music when presenting the 🍓, Didn't planned on having a good laugh 😂 today!!

what a coinsidence i just stumble across their business intro video a hour before upload this video 😁

here in Santa Maria, California our strawberrys grow to the size of your palm and have an amazing flavor ive never been able to get from any other strawberrys

Nothing beats albion strawberries. I found them at the Berkeley Bowl once.

I enjoy the white strawberries that we have here in Florida... I would purchase this type too

They grow with hydroponics thats why there is more water in it and less flavor... though they pick it ripe when its at its sweetest.... I grow my own and look forward to them all winter... I don't like to spray so I get damages due to wildlife, pests, and environment. So hydroponics has its up side maybe find a place inbetween like using organic soil trays or stacked pots.

when I grow in my hydroponic garden, for leaves at least - the flavor is much stronger. I never tried fruit - so maybe it's diffrent.

The texture difference maybe wasn’t from how it was ripen. I grow a lot of strawberries and alpine strawberries, and in general there is a pretty big difference in texture for strawberry verities that were created for selling them commercially vs ones either made for self picking selling or just to be grown in the garden. As I’ve understood when you sell them commercially having a firmer verity tend to hold up to transportation a lot better with less bruising. But they tend to be less juicy, and even if allowed to fully ripen on the plant, still often noticeably less sweet. If these are able to be super locally produced, and sold in packaging where that are just one single layer with plenty of space between them they probably are better able to sell softer juicer verities. Though really during strawberry season, you probably are able to get a lot better price and likely a even juicier and more flavour packed strawberry if you go to a self picking strawberry grower.