Move over pumpkin-spiced everything.
Retailers have a new high-priced seasonal harbinger they’re hoping customers will fall for.
San Francisco-based boutique grocer Bi-Rite is shilling “organic” red, orange and yellow leaves wrapped in brown craft paper for $14.95 per bunch.
They’re pesticide-free and freshly pruned from the maple trees of McGinnis Ranch, a certified organic farm in Watsonville, Calif.
“They are three- to five-foot tall branches with beautiful leaves,” Sandi McGinnis-Garcia of McGinnis Ranch told The Post.
Collecting the foliage is a labor-intensive process, added McGinnis-Garcia, who sells them to Bi-Rite for $7.50 a bunch.
“I have to get on a ladder, put it in a cooler of water and drive the 99 miles to the city,” she said.
“It’s not like I am snapping off branches from the side of the road.”
Bi-Rite isn’t the only retailer selling eye-popping displays of color-changing leaves, which are becoming increasingly hard to spot due to unseasonably warm weather, according to scientists.
Etsy and DriedDecor.com are also promoting hand-plucked, carefully preserved dead leaves for a price.
If $15 seems steep for a heap of landscaping waste, Bi-Rite assures shoppers that they’re getting only top-quality organic refuse.
“Our prices are a reflection of the quality of the food, ingredients and flowers we sell, which come from farmers and ranchers who use methods that protect the land and the people who work it,” a Bi-Rite spokesperson told Vice.
“We want to pay these farmers who operate more responsibly a fair price to help ensure they can continue farming for decades to come.”
Meanwhile, James DeSantis, the landscaping star of Bravo’s “Backyard Envy,” says that with the right marketing, Bi-Rite could charge foliage-starved West Coasters even more.
“The sign just says ‘fall leaves,’ but they should say ‘fall foliage branches’ and could have charged $22,” DeSantis told The Post.
Bi-Rite plans to offer additional fall foliage options, but didn’t say at what price.
“As the maple season winds down, we expect to have other autumn leaves, such as oak and pistache, from Figone Ranch,” Bi-Rite said.