Limited lettuce skyrockets salad costs
Shortage of produce is a struggle for restaurants and grocery shoppers
In the mood for salad? You may have to get creative for a few weeks, because a lettuce shortage is keeping the product in short supply.
Local restaurants and grocery shoppers alike are finding either no available lettuce or prices that have skyrocketed.
“The bottom line is that either the supplier is A, out of (lettuce), or B, has it at a 300 percent price hike — as recently as seven to 10 days ago. Or what they have is extremely poor quality,” said Rocco Biale, owner of Rocco’s Ristorante Pizzeria in Walnut Creek.
Faced with having to pay upwards of $75 a case for what 10 days ago cost about $18, Biale has chosen to not buy romaine lettuce right now.
While it’s a disappointment to those who love a Caesar salad, Biale said he is being honest with customers about the lettuce challenges and instead steering them toward salads made from spinach, for example, which is not facing as much of a crunch, or iceberg lettuce, which is still expensive but manageable.
Retailers appear to be affected as well. A trip to a local Trader Joe’s this week found no romaine lettuce on the shelves. Trader Joe’s did not respond to requests for information on
whether that was directly tied to the lettuce shortage.
The problem stems from what growers call the “transition” of the growing season.
Typically during winter, growers in the San Joaquin and Salinas valleys move crops to Arizona to chase the warm weather, said Jeff Pieracci, owner of Galli Produce in San Jose.
At the end of winter, it starts to move back up, with stints in other agricultural areas along the way. The torrential rains California saw in late winter washed away what had been planted or made it so that growers had to wait for things to dry out a little bit to replant, Pieracci said.
With warm weather, it should recover in a few weeks, said Brian Isaeff, a territory manager for US Foods, which supplies produce and other food to restaurants and other eateries across the country.
Shortages such as this occur every so often, particularly because of weather or other circumstances beyond the control of the growers, Isaeff said, and food prices and availability are always subject to supply.
Still, the lettuce shortage right now is significant, Pieracci said.
“It’s a scramble for product. I’m hearing prices I haven’t ever seen before, and I’ve been doing this for 40 years,” Pieracci said.
Other vegetables, including broccoli and cauliflower, are also in short supply at the moment, driving up prices. The most affected right now are romaine, butter and red leaf lettuce, Pieracci said.
Produce such as baby spinach or other spring mixes are picked early in their life, and therefore recover more quickly.
Restaurants and cooks at home can substitute those for the harder-to-find lettuces, but both suppliers and eateries hope the produce recovers soon.
“I’m monitoring it,” Biale said.