NEW YORK Restaurant operations impacted by the recent shortage of tomatoes brought on by severe winter weather won’t see any relief until at least mid-April, when warmer weather returns and other regions can fill the need for supply, industry experts said.
This winter’s deep freezes across the East Coast wreaked havoc on tomato growers, and caused prices for viable and ripe tomatoes to skyrocket. Restaurateurs were forced to devise ways to use less of the product or find alterative sources for both economic and supply-related reasons.
“This has really been the perfect storm for tomatoes,” said Brian Kane, vice president of client services for ProAct USA, a Monterey, Calif.-based produce distributor. “Obviously, the key has been the Florida freeze that happened back in early January. It is now that everyone is starting to feel the effects of that damage; the blooms haven’t been able to drop so the growers are not getting full-size tomatoes.
“And everyone on the East Coast is buying from the West Coast, which is creating a huge demand and causing an increase in prices.”
Kane said production should begin ramping up in the Carolinas next month, which will help alleviate the supply-demand issue and decrease costs for some operators. Recent prices have risen by double digits, sometimes $10, $15 or $20 a case because of the supply-demand situation, he said. According to USDA pricing information, a two-layer flat pack of round tomatoes from Mexico cost between $6.95 and $8 in February, for example, and just one month later, around March 1, the same product was priced at $26.95.
As a result of the shortage, some large national chains, such as Subway and Wendy’s have come up with alternate plans to ease the pressures it has created on their respective operations. Subway, for example, has begun purchasing other varieties of tomatoes besides the round beefsteaks that have been hardest hit by the freeze. Spokesman Les Winograd said the chain had no intention of taking tomatoes off of its menu; instead it is purchasing Roma tomatoes as well as imports grown in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
“We’re not taking them off of the menu and we’re not passing the rising costs onto the customers,” he said. “We are expanding our purchasing to other varieties of tomatoes than the ones we usually buy. And this also happens to be the time when we start to transition our purchasing to other growing regions.”
Wendy’s spokesman Denny Lynch confirmed the chain is now serving tomatoes on a request-only basis systemwide.
Contact Elissa Elan at [email protected].