Iowa restaurant drops salads amid national lettuce price spike
By Abigail Kurten
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EDDYVILLE, Iowa (KCCI) — An Eddyville restaurant is cutting salads off its menu due to skyrocketing lettuce costs.
In a Facebook post Wednesday morning, the owner of the Welcome Inn Bar and Grill posted a photo of the cost of 20 pounds of shredded lettuce, totaling just under $80.
Normally, she says, it’s at most $23.
“I was like, what the heck?” Owner Netty Johnson said. She only came to the decision to remove salads from the menu entirely after she tried three different distributors to no avail.
“They’re all way higher,” she said.
Andrew Olsavsky, the Sales and Marketing Vice President of Des Moines-based produce distributor Loffredo Fresh Foods, says price spikes this year are expected.
Most lettuce seen in stores and restaurants is grown in California from April to November. This time of year, production shifts to the Yuma Valley in Arizona.
“When they transition all that production from Salinas (Valley) to Yuma, the supply tightens up and causes our prices to go up,” he explained. “If they have some late-season weather in the Salinas Valley or some early-season weather in Yuma, it can really tighten up supplies and drive up costs.”
Though he says the early yields in Arizona are promising, costs will likely come down in the coming weeks.
But in the meantime, Johnson says it’s not something she can easily find solutions for.
“I cannot run 30 miles this way or 60 miles this way to try and go and get this or that,” she said. “I really rely on my distributors.”
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