Janet McGinty (57) has been catapulted to one of the world’s most wealthy, by selling her third punnet of strawberries in a week. While Jeff Bezos’ Amazon employs hundreds of thousands and turns a profit $10,000 a second, selling fruit out of a van is more effective and can done from sitting in a deckchair.
Many have questioned the validity of a business model which involves someone snoozing in a layby for ten hours. Janet explained: ‘First we pay someone to pick, package and transport the strawberries, so our overheads work out at about £5 a box. I then sell them on at 50p a punnet, making a profit of £27,7344,222 per strawberry’,
Economists refer to this as the ‘Strawberry Paradox’, where a seemingly loss-making venture generates insane levels of profitability – a little bit like James Corden’s career. Likewise, experts in food retail have long known that people are uneasy going to a supermarket, they would much rather buy food from an unlicensed individual in a darkened layby; particularly if the seller has an eyepatch and love/hate tattooed on their knuckles.
Janet spoke of her success: ‘I used to sell lucky heather but that barely covered the cost of my third home in Monaco. But selling fresh strawberries has been a gold mine. Thank goodness, this is something I can do all year round’.