Adelaide fruit and veg seller’s online rant against price gauging draws media attention

Some of the media have labelled John Kapiris of Adelaide a “foul-mouthed fruiterer” for his latest online guerrilla-advertising post with a telling message in which he uses choice, fruity language to berate competitors who are taking advantage of inflation fears to hike up their prices.

While the language might not be appropriate for some ears, Mr Kapiris’ social media is striking a chord with consumers tired of paying top dollar for vegetables like lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. His posts which have pulled no punches for some time now, have also drawn the attention of leading media organisations. On Thursday, for example, he was to be interviewed by Channel Nine’s A Current Affair and Channel 7 has also kept an eye on his online presence.

“The latest video message I posted (last Sunday) has gone viral. I have had a lot of interviews and today you can’t move in the shop,” Mr Kapiris told Neos Kosmos.

Mr Kapiris knows his onions. He has run St Bernard’s Fruit and Veg in Rostrevor, a largely Italian suburb in eastern Adelaide, for the past 14 years. He grew up in the fruit-and-veg world in the business that his grandfather, John Kapiris, built up after he came to Australia from Chios in the 1950s.

“In my experience, a lot of the current price increases are due to the floods which prevented growers in Queensland and NSW from planting their first and second crops – so there have been shortages. But everywhere I go, I am hearing people are putting up their prices as an opportunity to make a quick profit.”

John Kapiris’ tongue-in-cheek online antics have drawn a lot of hits and media attention. Photo: Supplied/Instagram John Kapiris

He says he has kept his prices down because people are doing it tough with rising fuel prices and energy costs.

“How come I am so cheap? It is because I want to be. It is the same market for me as everyone else,” he said. “What I have done is buy in bulk, I bring in a full truck of fresh produce every two days. I have my connections in the growing industry and we ourselves are growers. The prices on some produce has gone up by 20 percent, but I also make sure I also offer extra specials so customers can balance what is in their pockets.

“If lettuce cucumbers are expensive, then I will have cheap bananas and other produce to balance that. For example my wife, Leannda is offering our pizzas for $5, so people can afford to buy them.”

This weekend he is offering cannoli sourced from a local Italian baker for $2 and the response is already exceeding supply.

“My pappou taught us from an early age to look after the customer and forget the money. The most important thing is to get people into the shop. When they see it full of customers then people they think it must be a good shop.”

“If I have 10 items in the shops that are really expensive, I will make sure there are 10 items that are really cheap to balance things out.”

While his grandfather influenced his philosophy, his online brand of getting the word is uniquely his own.

John Kapiris’ tongue-in-cheek online antics have drawn a lot of hits and media attention. Photo: Supplied/Instagram John KapirisIt started in 2019 when a German supermarket chain, Aldi, decided to open up branches in South Australia, including a branch near him which sparked a rant online that earned him a lot of attention.

He was so outraged by the price the supermarket chain was charging for its bananas that he declared he would be selling his bananas at half the price for a month.

“We go so much coverage from that it went viral,” Mr Kapiris said. In March this year, he took online exception to the supermarket chain posting an ad on a bus stop near the entrance of his business and again it made national news when he threatened to burn it down or use a forklift to remove the offending ad.

“The power of social media is phenomenal – no matter how far you go, you can take it further. I wish the ads would be popular without the swearing, but the more crazy I act and the more I swear, the more traction I get. All the footage is one take. If I stuff up, we keep rolling because I want people to see it is all real and true.”

“Leannda is not involved with the online videos, she looks after paper work for the shop and the pizzas but she does have good ideas for the videos. The kids, two boys aged 21 and 16 and his 18-year-old daughter work at the shop but take no part in the video.

And as for the people who are offended by the strong language?

“I do not delete the comments, there are those who complain but they are a minority and they do not have to follow me.

As for the price of vegetables? Mr Kapiris is confident they will start coming down in price in about three weeks’ time as produce from Queensland, NSW and Western Australia starts to come in again.

Watch the video below (explicit language warning):