Thank I will!

Not a single free floating pistachio bean anywhere. But empties galore! WTF!

I mean if I want to buy shells I'll do that.

At my Costco, pistachios are $20 for a 48 oz bag, so 41 cents an ounce. At my local Ralph's, they're $11 for a 16 oz bag, so 68 cents an ounce. So the grocery store is 67% more expensive. That's way more than the percentage of empty shells we're seeing, and I doubt the shells weigh as much as the nuts.

If they are more than 25% cheaper it’s still worth it if you are already at a Costco.

Bulkbarn in Canada, maybe? But that's weird to do imo.

Also, the unshelled nuts might still be in the bag. Shit shakes loose, ya know

See my other response, it's very much not random. Every processed product in the modern world is hyper optimized for profit. At the least , they know the average weight of shell with nut and without in grams or something smaller. Also likely a hopper with high speed cameras to count yield per bag to maintain exact profit margins. There could be, and likely is, a scale at the end of line that weighs and would five a fairly faithful estimate of empty percentage per bag. And all that is automated.

Problem is that infrastructure likely exists more or less and they have just turned up the acceptable percentage of empties probably. Like anything else, VC pushes those lines quarter after quarter until people might revolt (or in another time, an administration regulates an acceptable amount of "defective" product).

You are seriously underestimating the industrial factory technology at scale to do quality control when processing food. If they wanted, they could literally remove individual ants from the flow of 5 ton sacks of coffee beans, in a sustainable way. They literally have lasers and sensors to find undesirable product and knock it out of high speed belt flows of fruits and vegetables with micro targeted jets of air and things like that.

You're mistake is is that you are thinking of how YOU would sort these yourself, that's part of our problem as humans, we have a bit of a narcissistic bias. Similar to trump people that think, " he's doing well enough... I'd do a but better probably, but he's doing okay" they are comparing to themselves as baseline, when they aren't even near qualified either.

Don't sell yourself short

I see I'm being summoned...

No I'm good Never really liked nuts anyway but this cracked it for me