Little Christmas joy for vendors as sorrel spoilage ruins profits

Low sales volumes of sorrel and gungo peas, staple Yuletide fare in Jamaican kitchens, have dimmed the spirits of vendors operating at Coronation Market in downtown Kingston, who are forecasting that this Christmas won’t be as jolly as in previous seasons.

Travelling from as far as Lacovia in the Breadbasket Parish of St Elizabeth, sorrel vendor Fitzroy ‘Ballie’ Pusey said that he has sustained more loss than profit this season – a reversal of pre-COVID-19 fortunes, he recalled, when throngs of customers would flock the market for sorrel from as early as mid-November.

This time around, the take-up has been markedly below par.

Pusey said that he has had to slash margins by lowering the price of sorrel from $350 per pound to $200.

That strategy, however, has not boosted revenue, leaving him instead to grapple with mass spoilage.

In the last week of November, Pusey lost 75 pounds of produce to spoilage, selling a little over 50lb of the 150lb of sorrel he transported into the capital.

“Them only ask the price and walk past,” he lamented, referencing his inability to reel in many customers.

He said that dropping prices any further would jeopardise his operations.

“You still nah go earn nothing, because a $180 dem want a country if you nuh plant it fi carry fi come a town ... . If me sell 100 pounds, a only $2,000 that, and that can’t work,” he said in a Gleaner interview.

“If me never drive my bus and did have to pay fi carry up, it woulda worse on me,” he added.

With another 300lb more on the way, Pusey is at a loss as to how he would be able to offload his stock.

“Sorrel sell last year harder than this, you hear. A di lockdown did go on, so it look like the people dem buy it up more because they were staying inside,” he told The Gleaner, attributing the increased patronage experienced in 2021 to the emergence from the shadow of COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews.

Irene ‘Reene’ Brown Phillips, a sorrel and gungo vendor selling in Coronation Market for more than 40 years, is encouraging Jamaicans to shop for their produce early in order to escape the inevitable price hikes as Christmas Day draws closer.

“Buy from now. Wash them and freeze them, so next week when it raise, you a sing inna you heart because you know you buy already,” she cautioned.

“Things not going too good, especially the sorrel ... . The gungo [sales] not bad, because the gungo just come in.”

During the interview, Brown Phillips began to remove spoiled sorrel from her heap. Like Pusey, she said spoilage concerns were a common refrain among most vendors.

“When them not selling fast enough, me lose, but what can I do? ... .There is nothing we can do about the spoilage ... . If you and your supplier have a good relationship, maybe him can give you back a 3lb and then you just satisfy,” Brown Phillips said.

She has also had to cut prices, noting that it was “better you drop you price than lose”.

Another vendor who goes by the name Joy attributed the slow sales of gungo peas to the possibility of consumers reserving stock from last Christmas in their freezers.

Gungo retails for $250 a pound, but is bound to rise with Christmas 18 days away.

“Most people say the price kinda high same way ... . Some people buy, some people say ‘a next time’,” Joy said.

“Probably true it don’t reach that close to Christmas why people not buying so much,” she added.

asha.wilks@gleanerjm.com