It will take more than the moon blocking out the face of the sun for Emily Gegg and Amanda Schwent to charge more for moonsicles.
The best friends and co-owners of Luna’s Shaved Ice have stockpiled 25,000 of their frozen fruit pops to sell for $3 apiece to visitors descending on Perryville, Missouri, to watch Monday’s total solar eclipse.
“We didn’t even discuss raising the price for the eclipse weekend,” said Gegg.
“That wouldn’t be right,” Schwent added.
Perryville, about 80 miles south of St. Louis, is in the path of totality stretching from Texas to Maine, where the shadow of the moon will fully obscure the sun for several minutes.
All along that swath, businesses large and small are looking to cash in. Delta Air Lines is running eclipse flights from Austin and Dallas to Detroit. Hotels are charging guests an average of $170 more Sunday than on the same day last year, according to travel technology company Amadeus. Tickets to an all-day sound healing retreat in Vermont have been going for $222 a pop.
But in Perryville, population 8,500, many businesses have decided they “don’t need to make every last dollar,” said City Administrator Brent Buerck.