Local Retailers Report Surge In "Apple" Demand; Stock Up On Electronics Instead

WAUKESHA — Retailers across Waukesha reported a 340 percent spike in customers asking for "apples" in the 24 hours following Saturday's Apple Harvest Festival, most of whom left empty-handed and bewildered, and 260 of whom left with a laptop keyboard or a smartphone.

The sales figures, compiled Sunday afternoon from store managers, show 217 laptop keyboards and 43 smartphones sold to shoppers who had come in specifically for apples. The total number of apples sold in those transactions was zero. Store managers said they are not sure what the customers were looking for but are fairly sure they found it.

Aisle 14

The surge was felt most acutely at the Best Buy on the city's east side, where staff spent approximately four hours Sunday explaining that the store sells computers and not produce. The store's general manager, who asked that his name not appear because "the apple thing is still going," said the first request came at 10:02 a.m. and the 60th arrived before noon.

"We finally put up a sign," the manager said. The sign, a 24-by-36-inch placard posted near the entrance at 1:15 p.m., reads "WE SELL COMPUTERS. WE DO NOT SELL APPLES. PIGGLY WIGGLY DOES." It was drafted by the store's assistant manager on a break and approved by the general manager without edits.

"We finally put up a sign."

— Best Buy general manager, who asked not to be named

The manager acknowledged that the store does carry Apple-brand products, 14 of them by his count, a fact he said "has not helped at all." Roughly one in five of the customers who read the sign purchased something anyway, which he described as "a policy we did not set and cannot explain." One customer asked whether the smartphone he bought came in Honeycrisp. Staff said it came in a silver.

The store logged 31 requests for "the good kind" and nine for "the red one." One shopper asked for directions to the orchard, and was directed to the parking lot.

The Consolation Prize

At the Piggly Wiggly on East Sunset Drive, the produce department saw unusual interest from customers who told staff the festival had not sold any actual fruit, only locally sourced fall goods. Produce manager Denise Krawczyk, 52, said the Jonagold bin was empty by 11:40 a.m. Sunday and was restocked twice, the second time from the Honeycrisp bin, "which nobody had a problem with, because they were desperate."

Lorraine Pekarske, 61, of Waukesha, purchased 12 pounds of Jonagolds at $2.49 a pound, for a total of $29.88. She said she had gone to the festival Saturday expecting to leave with a bag of apples and instead left with a cider donut and a general feeling of being misled.

"I asked three different vendors where the apples were and all three said they were 'apple-forward,'" Pekarske said, holding a paper bag she had asked to have doubled. "That's an overpriced consolation prize, and I'm eating every one of them."

Pekarske said she has no plans to return to the festival next year but will "check the website first, and then check the website again."

What The Festival Says

A festival spokesperson said the event has never advertised loose apples for sale and has described itself since its founding as "a celebration of the harvest season, in spirit." The spokesperson said the festival's promotional materials were reviewed Sunday and "the word apple appears in them, which is the extent of our commitment."

Asked whether the festival would consider selling apples next year, the spokesperson said the organizers would "take it under advisement, and then probably form a subcommittee."

At press time, a woman at the Best Buy customer service desk was asking whether the store carried blackberries. The general manager said the store has not sold a BlackBerry since 2014. He pulled up a stool.