- Amazon's HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia features two of the company's community banana stands.
- Employees and members of the public can pick up bananas for free at the stands.
Amazon's second headquarters, in Arlington, Virginia, has lots of amenities for employees and passersby, including a dog park and a weekend farmers market.
But one of its most distinct offerings is much simpler: A stand for distributing free bananas.
On Thursday, during the ribbon-cutting for Metropolitan Park, the first phase of the new Virginia headquarters, the bananas were free to Amazon employees and visitors, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The stand is actually one of two at HQ2, Amazon told Insider.
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About 8,000 employees are expected to report to Metropolitan Park by this fall, Insider previously reported. Amazon pushed back the groundbreaking for PenPlace, the second phase of the headquarters, earlier this year as the company cut costs and laid off thousands of employees around the US.
Arlington was one of two sites chosen for Amazon's HQ2 in 2018. But it backtracked on plans to build a campus in New York City the following year after backlash from local residents and officials.
Although Metropolitan Park just opened, Amazon has supplied a banana stand in the area for just over a year, according to the Washington City Business Journal.
Amazon opened its first banana stand outside its Seattle headquarters in 2015. The idea came from Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos, who wanted to offer a free snack that was healthy and didn't come heavily packaged, Amazon told Insider.
Bananas have another advantage, Amazon told Insider: You don't need to wash them before taking a bite.
In the first year and a half, Amazon gave out 1.7 million bananas, according to the Journal. Today, Amazon says, it distributes thousands of bananas each week. It also has a total of seven stands: Two in Seattle, one in nearby Bellevue, one in Nashville, two in Arlington, and another in Tokyo.
In a video produced by Amazon about the first stand in Seattle, the company interviews enthusiastic patrons of the stand, one even says, "This is my daily breakfast."
"Anyone can come in off the street: employees, non-employees, children, dogs," says a "banista," a riff on "barista," who works at the stand.
A banana stand also popped up temporarily at Washington DC's Union Station in 2017 as the company was facing increasing criticism from Congress, according to the New York Times.
The concept has even drawn at least one imitator: Business advocates in DC's NoMa neighborhood set up their own banana stand in 2018 to promote the area's bid for Amazon's second headquarters, the Washingtonian reported at the time.