It's been a rough few months for tomatoes.
They've been swirled in California floods. They've been smashed by Florida hurricanes. They've been picked at by Mexican bugs.
The result has been a national tomato shortage that has sent prices climbing like a vine seeking light. With costs up and quality down, some national restaurant chains are reconsidering their marketing strategies to keep the thought of juicy, tender tomatoes off customers' minds, or switching recipes to make up for the absence of certain hard-to-find varieties.
Bad weather ruined much of the tomato crop in Florida. Plastic was ripped from hothouses on this farm in Wimauma, Fla.
(Skip O'rourke -- St. Petersburg Times)
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The popular Juice Joint Cafe in Northwest Washington, meanwhile, has at least for the next few weeks become a tomato-free zone.
"The quality is terrible. They're picking them early because there's a demand," co-owner Tom Holland said. "They're green. They're hard. They have no tomato flavor." And they're not cheap: A 25-pound crate of tomatoes would cost Holland $46.50, more than double what he is used to paying. He concluded that it wasn't worth it to leave customers to choose whether they want to add cucumber to their sandwiches to fill the void.
The tomato shortage began in October and is expected to continue into next month. Many in the produce industry expect the next two weeks to be the worst yet as any remaining supply is used up before a new harvest can replenish the market. By the time it's over, it could be the worst shortage since a frost knocked out much of the winter tomato crop in 1989, said Gary Lucier, an Agriculture Department economist. "About a third of the tomatoes that we'd usually see are actually coming to market," Lucier said.
The cause? Rotten tomato karma.
"It's a triple whammy," said B. Hudson Riehle, senior vice president for research at the National Restaurant Association. "You have had the impact of hurricanes in Florida concurrent with the fact that California has had unseasonably high rains. And in the Mexican market you have had some pest problems. So you have the confluence of these three isolated events putting pressure not only on availability but on price."
Tomatoes at the point of shipment have been selling in recent days for more than $1.20 a pound, four times what they cost this time last year. The average U.S. consumer demands 18 pounds of fresh tomatoes a year, according to the Agriculture Department, so restaurants and grocery stores face the unappetizing choice of raising prices or covering the higher cost themselves.
Safeway supermarkets spokesman Gregory A. TenEyck said the chain is resisting higher retail prices. "We try to absorb as much of the increase in cost as we can. But inevitably the consumer will see an increase," he said. Tomatoes, he said, cost about 10 percent more than they would have without the shortage.
