Produce with Appeal: The Story of Top Banana
Chapter Three: The Top Banana
Story by Nicholas Reiner
Otto opened Top Banana in 1973 in Alhambra. All his friends shook their heads like he’d gone off the deep end. They asked what the hell was wrong with him and promised him he’d be back working in the big markets in no time. Well, he didn’t make big money, to be sure, but the store was busy from the moment it opened. It was dimes, nickels, and pennies now but Otto was happy and it was fun. He was a detail man and built all the display tables himself, with his hands.
How did he choose the name “Top Banana?” When Otto was in his 30s, still working as a buyer at Albertson’s, he’d play basketball on weeknights in his Alhambra neighborhood. Pick-up games would feature mainly fathers in their 30s, engineers, administrators at Cal State, other professionals. Everyone had a nickname. Because Otto was in produce, his was “The Top Banana.” On the court those nights, he was The Top Banana, whether his team was winning or losing. When it came time to name the store, well: it sounded better than Otto’s Produce.
Produce itself is a business with a bunch of nicknames. Each section of Top Banana had its own. The wet stand, with green leaf lettuce, red leaf, butter lettuce, chard, kale, and nappa. You’d walk across the aisle to the bean counter, where you could find green beans, tomatoes, and eggplant. A row over was the potato table, home to white rose potatoes, red onions, and garlic. The last aisle was the fruit table, maybe the darling of the store, teeming with plums, nectarines, peaches, and apricots in the summer and stocked with Red Delicious, Granny Smith apples, and bananas year-round.
Otto had specific ideas about Top Banana’s purpose as a business. When he was managing for Albertsons, he didn’t feel great about certain hiring practices. At the beginning of each year there, he’d hire 40 box boys, knowing full well he only needed 20. All of them high school kids, they were so excited to have a job but didn’t yet know how to work. If they walked instead of ran out to get a shopping cart in the parking lot, they were let go in short order. He never felt good about knowing he was going to cut people and in those moments he didn’t feel like he was really helping people learn how to work. He wanted Top Banana to be the opposite of that, so that when high school kids would come in, they’d learn the basics of the working world-- teamwork, accountability to one’s peers, thoroughness. Otto wanted young people to use the job as a springboard to other lines of work.
Otto knew all the Top Banana customers by name and was so friendly to everybody who came in the store. When the store was up and running, Otto never turned away people who didn’t have the money to pay for food. “You don’t have money this week? Oh well, just pay later.” And if they wanted to sweep some floors out in the back in exchange for some fruit, he’d give them that job. “I need someone to mop the floor back there, right now,” he’d say. If people came in and wanted food, you give them food. You don’t ever say no to people who wanted food.
Otto’s words jogged from memory an experience I had when I worked at Top Banana. In the spring of 2006, I was setting up watermelons on the crates outside the front of the store. As I was stacking the watermelons in mini-pyramid structures, one fell on the sidewalk and cracked, pink juice oozing out of its side. I cursed softly to myself and went to get paper towels and two plastic bags to clean up the spill. When I returned, I passed who I assumed by garb and look to be a homeless lady. I offered her the plastic bags holding the watermelon, still largely intact and ripe. She smiled, accepted the watermelon and took off the black-beaded bracelet she was wearing on her right wrist to give to me. We exchanged the gifts and nodded thanks to each other. I wore that bracelet for months, until my sister ripped it off my wrist during a playful argument, the black pebble beads dropping to the wood floor of our house like watermelon seeds.
