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Iceberg hits titanic rise in lettuce costs Restaurants, grocers see effect of poor weather conditions for the crop By GREG STILES Chris Ginder knew there was trouble on the horizon a couple of months ago when travelers from Arizona told him about the flurry of activity in lettuce fields. "They saw them frantically picking everything in the field and I said to myself 'Here comes the wave,'" recalls Ginder, produce supervisor at Harry & David's Country Village in Medford. Pickers were maneuvering around unfavorable winter weather. Sure enough, by the end of February iceberg lettuce prices hit a three-year high and romaine wasn't far behind. Red- and green-leaf varieties were just as expensive. Lettuce pushing $3 a head didn't sound as appetizing or healthy as it had a few weeks earlier. Consumers have backed off from buying lettuce. Restaurant operators have looked for alternatives and produce departments have cut orders, while shoppers have pushed their carts to the spinach and cabbage sections. "I've been in this deal for 25 years and I've never seen anything like it," says Mark Temmerman, purchasing manager at Fresh Express Foods Corp. of Medford, which numbers Rogue Valley Manor and Rogue Valley Medical Center among its institutional customers. The good news is Romaine prices are starting to fall from the stratosphere. However, iceberg heads are still in orbit. On Friday, foodservice.com reported iceberg lettuce hit a record-high of $54.10 per case last week as shipments dropped 35 percent from a similar period in 2001. That's the cost the broker is getting from wholesalers and other large customers. A year ago, the cost was well under $10. "When they got to charging us $58 a box this week, we stopped buying iceberg," says Martha Forrest, who operates Farmer's Market between Phoenix and Talent. "There's been a lot of resistance to the prices we've been charging - people have been buying a lot of spinach. But it's already gotten better, we have red- and green-leaf lettuce for 99 cents now." Four distinct lettuce crops find their way to Southern Oregon tables. The first is grown in Arizona and the Imperial Valley of California. Huron, Calif., west of Bakersfield, is the hub for the second growing season - primarily in April - and Salinas and Santa Maria near California's Central Coast is the third region. The fourth and smallest growing area is in Oregon. What caused the recent spike was an unusual weather pattern in which there were warmer than normal temperatures in November and December that made the spring lettuce mature earlier and forced producers to harvest earlier than scheduled. However, a prolonged cold snap from late December to February slowed the growth. The result was higher prices, the reason depends on your perspective. One factor was the demand of large conglomerates that contract for massive amounts of produce packaged for retailers and restaurants. "Everyone was harvesting to keep the suppliers going," Temmerman says. Harry & David's Ginder says that when producers harvested early it created a shortage when it came time for the largest iceberg customers. Most consumers think in terms of how much a head of lettuce costs. Retailers think in terms of 24-count cases, and the price varies day to day. "We were paying something like a low of $18 and a high of $25 a box," Ginder says. "Romaine peaked around $72. Right now we're selling iceberg for $2.59 a pound. If we sold it by the head, it would scare everybody off." By comparison, he says, romaine was going for $2.59, and green- and red-leaf heads for about a dollar. The spike has been hard on restaurants, which don't charge market prices for their salads. "It's a little hard to change the prices on the menu, but like a lot of the restaurants we're bulking salads up with red cabbage and green-leaf and lots of romaine, even though the price has gone up," says Jeff Poulsen, manager of Two Pines and Carlotta's in Shady Cove, where costs have risen from $30-$32 a case to as much as $59. "We go through two cases of romaine a week, and six cases of iceberg. "If it isn't lettuce doing it to you, it's something else. A while back, dairy products were extremely high. We had to take the brunt of it and hope they'd come down sooner or later." Jeff and Penelope Levin of MacLevin's Whole Foods Restaurant in Jacksonville abandoned their normal wholesale lettuce source when the price reached $60 per case. They shopped at Costco and found iceberg heads for 46.5 cents apiece. "If we hadn't been able to find this lettuce," he says, "We would probably have discontinued salads." The rising cost has put sandwich makers in a fix that forces them to make choices. Yellow Submarine Sandwich Shop owner Dave Campfield can only shrug and guess that the $56 per-case price he was paying for Ocean Mist iceberg heads will be passed on. "Actually, we're going to have to raise the price," says Campfield, whose shop goes through a case and a half per week. And even when lettuce prices come back to earth, something else will spike. "It's just the way it is in the fresh fruit and vegetable business - always supply and demand," Temmerman says. "We just went through a point right before this with broccoli, where we had to bring it up from Mexico." Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.