What happened to nuts on planes? They’re on sale cheap in this Dallas-Fort Worth shop
It’s a bad year for nuts.
Abandoned in empty barrooms, forgotten along with baseball, nuts are no longer a ubiquitous American snack.
You might say the owner of an Arlington nut company is shell-shocked.
“I have 50,000 pounds of nuts American Airlines and United didn’t want!” said Kim Peacock of GNS Foods and GreatNuts.com, the airline’s roaster for 30 years.
“We’re feeling sad. We’re sitting on a lot of nuts.”
Business is off 90%, Peacock said. The GNS GreatNuts factory store has marked deluxe mixed nuts down to less than $5 a pound.
In a typical year, GNS roasts 2.4 million pounds of nuts at its factory and store at 2109 E. Division St., near Texas 360.
Most of the cashew-almond-walnut-pecan mix goes to major airlines. But airlines are not serving nuts right now, even in first class.
“We’ve been asking American Airlines to help us get rid of these,” she said, waving toward a warehouse with rows of boxes stamped “American” or “United.”
“These are the first-class mixed nuts,” she said proudly.
“And we’ve got — what? — 70,000 bags.”
They’re now on sale for less than half the usual price.
You can snack on surplus cashews and almonds and imagine you’re flying first class on a tropical vacation.
I was not aware until this week that America has a nut glut.
Federal trade restrictions and tariffs up to 75% have hurt growers’ sales to China and other countries, according to Fox Business.
According to Modern Farmer, a giant crop of almonds and walnuts was planted to meet what until this year had been an ever-growing demand.
But nobody predicted America would stop traveling, going to bars or munching on nuts.
“When [American Airlines] said they were taking them off the flights, we said, ‘Uh-oh,’ “ Peacock said.
The airline told her to wait three weeks. Then she was told the nuts were gone for good, to end flight attendants’ contact with passengers.
In a written statement, she said the company offered to bag the nuts in single-serve portions, either for airline passengers or as a bonus gift to AAdvantage members.
No sale.
“Yet. on my last flight in first class, I was served a cheese-cracker-fruit-chocolate tray complete with plasticware,” Peacock wrote. “However, they can’t keep nuts?”
The GreatNuts outlet store looks like a nut store from the 1980s.
It has boxes and bags of gifts, including candied pecans from renowned Durham-Ellis Pecan Co. in Comanche.
There are no signs about organic nut crops, or photo portraits of growers’ families, or lectures about social or environmental responsibility
I’d describe it the same way I’d describe 2020.
Just nuts.
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
