Meet Hy-Vee’s banana expert: Norm Davis

Tucked deep within Hy-Vee’s sprawling perishable distribution facility in Chariton, IA is a room where Norm Davis performs his magic.

Hy-Vee VP Tod Hockenson (left) and Iowa Governor Terry Branstad on a tour of the perishables distribution facility in Chariton.

Here he receives truckloads of freshly harvested bananas that are bright green, rock-hard and inedible (“they taste like chalk and smell like a cucumber”) and shepherds them through a five-day ripening process, adjusting the temperature and administering just the right amount of ethylene gas to jumpstart their transformation into the sweet yellow fruit you find in the produce department at your Hy-Vee store.

Norm has worked at the Chariton facility for 40 years, and he’s explained the banana-ripening process to thousands of visitors — including current Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who stopped by for a visit recently as part of an economic development tour of the state.

Each of the cavernous banana rooms at the Chariton facility holds one or two truckloads of bananas, which means at any given time, Norm may be overseeing the ripening of 39,000 boxes of bananas.

Hear more from Norm and get an up-close look at the banana-ripening process at Hy-Vee’s perishable distribution facility in Chariton: