{"id":80948,"date":"2026-05-18T22:11:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T05:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=80948"},"modified":"2026-05-18T22:11:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T05:11:55","slug":"more-meat-less-tomato-inflation-hits-a-culinary-staple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=80948","title":{"rendered":"More Meat, Less Tomato \u2014 Inflation Hits a Culinary Staple"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Christopher Alam<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Image copyright Jack Gavigan 2009. Published under CC License 3.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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SAN FRANCISCO<\/strong> \u2014 When it comes to food, there is perhaps no more iconic or indeed universal ingredient as tomatoes. They\u2019re a staple, essential to everything from pizza to pico de gallo, from Middle Eastern wraps to your favorite Indian curries.<\/p>\n

And they are getting expensive, in the Bay Area and nationally, putting a strain on restaurants and shoppers alike.<\/p>\n

The cost of tomatoes surged by nearly 40% in April compared to last year,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the Consumer Price Index \u2014 the largest increase of any vegetable category tracked. Costs\u00a0reached an average<\/a>\u00a0of roughly $2.26 per pound, an eight-year high. Food prices overall, amongst other essentials,\u00a0rose nearly 3.8%\u00a0<\/a>in April compared to last year.<\/p>\n

Price uncertainty<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At Mesopotamia Kitchen in San Francisco\u2019s Noe Valley, tomatoes are featured prominently in sauce-heavy Turkish dishes like iskender kebab (lamb), moussaka (fried eggplant), and shakshuka (poached eggs). Salih Dogan, the manager, says that over the last month, the amount they have had to pay for tomatoes has fluctuated dramatically.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree or four times every week we get two cases of tomatoes, and lately every time there is a different price \u2026 sometimes going down, sometimes jumping. Usually the change is more than $10 or $20. Not week to week, sometimes daily.\u201d<\/p>\n

When prices first surged Dogan explored other vendors, but all were reflecting the same changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked one time why the price was up, they all said, \u2018We don\u2019t know, we just sell it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That instability in costs adds to mounting economic uncertainty that small businesses in costly cities like San Francisco\u00a0and Los Angeles<\/a>\u00a0feel acutely.<\/p>\n

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Image credit: Sofia Brazda<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Policy, poor weather impacts<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the case of tomatoes, a combination of tariffs, bad weather causing lower yields, high diesel costs for transportation, and high fertilizer costs are among the drivers behind the price surge. According\u00a0to the USDA<\/a>, roughly 70% of the U.S. domestic supply of tomatoes is imported. Of that number, 90% comes from Mexico, with the other 10% coming from Canada.<\/p>\n

The US previously had an agreement with Mexico that allowed tomatoes to be imported for free. The Trump administration\u00a0withdrew from that<\/a>\u00a0agreement last summer, and applied a 17% duty on tomatoes. The USDA\u00a0adds that<\/a>\u00a0poor winter weather in key production regions in Mexico, particularly Sinaloa, may have led to a poor harvest and thus constrained supply.<\/p>\n

The ongoing war in Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also caused supply chain disruptions, resulting in soaring fuel prices, driving up costs of fresh produce across the board.<\/p>\n

\u2018Meat is cheaper<\/strong>\u2018<\/h2>\n

Samer Elbandak owns two diners in San Francisco; Town\u2019s End Brunch, along the Embarcadero, and New Spot on Polk Street. He says his pocket book has felt the impact of tomato prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI joke about it. I tell the employees, put more meat on the burger and less tomato, because now meat is cheaper than the tomato.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elbandak says he buys two to four cases of tomatoes a week. Just a few months ago he was paying $15 per case. Now, he\u2019s paying between $75 to $88.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>We\u2019re talking about spending $500 more per week, a couple thousand more dollars a month, just on tomatoes. Just that would pay the water bill, the ecology bill, the insurance bill,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve seen some cases where tomatoes go up to $40, $45 and that was really ridiculous. But to see it in the 70s and 80s, that\u2019s unspoken of. I\u2019ve never seen it that high before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Elbandak is reluctant to increase menu prices or alter the recipes. For now, he is (no pun intended) eating the loss, but says if the affordability issue persists, he may have no choice.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>We\u2019re in unpredictable, unprecedented times. You cannot really tell what\u2019s going on or where the problem is coming from. There are so many factors and they\u2019re all going the wrong way at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Never seen anything like this<\/strong>\u2018<\/h2>\n

At Tia Margarita, a neighborhood institution in the Richmond district of San Francisco, die hard regulars have been packing the horseshoe bar and woodpaneled dining room for over 60 years. They\u2019re famous for the eponymous cocktails, but the menu is also full of classic, tomato-heavy\u00a0northern Mexican dishes like chili rellenos.<\/p>\n

Fernando, the general manager, says he\u2019s never seen anything like this before in his 35 years in the Bay Area restaurant business.<\/p>\n

\u201cTomatoes are very important to us. It\u2019s the number one ingredient we use,\u201d he says. \u201cWe used to pay about $40 per case of tomatoes. And last month, we were paying $110, $115 per case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buying cheaper varieties of tomatoes, like Romas, didn\u2019t make a difference because the price of every kind of tomato shot up. The overall price spike for Mexican produce is also affecting limes, which Tia Margarita burns through for its popular margaritas.<\/p>\n

And it isn\u2019t just restaurants feeling the squeeze. Higher costs are forcing shoppers to buy less, or switch from fresh foods to cheaper canned or frozen goods. Data show\u00a0sales of frozen foods nearly doubled<\/a>\u00a0during the first year of the Trump presidency as shoppers looked to fight inflation and stretch their food budgets.<\/p>\n

All of that means higher priced produce sits on the shelves longer, where it ages and dries out. Now a cocktail calling for one juiced lime needs two or three to get the same volume, says Fernando. Tomatoes he managed to purchase, meanwhile, were not fresh or juicy enough to be used in his pico de gallo and guacamole.<\/p>\n

Rising insecurity<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cThe thing is when you have an old restaurant and you have the quality of food for so many years with the same recipe, there is no way you can go any different. Literally you are forced to pay whatever it is you have to pay for that lower quality product.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says that prices have gone down somewhat in the past week \u2014 and concurrently, produce quality has improved. On May 8th, for a 5\u00d75 25lb box of vine-ripe tomatoes, he was able to pay $65. But that\u2019s still almost double what he\u2019s used to paying.<\/p>\n

Fernando says even as prices might start to stabilize, he feels the lingering tension of an unstable economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden you\u2019re not as confident as before,\u201d he says. \u201cYou get concerned when something like tomatoes or any vegetables go up more than double the price, then you start getting insecure about it. How can you put a price on a menu when something like this just doubles in price overnight?\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues, \u201cIt\u2019s making it very difficult for GMs and any business owners to run businesses because, any prices you set, you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re going to have to change it tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elbandak agrees that national fiscal policy, international turmoil, and bad weather are all landing on the humble vegetable that nearly every restaurant relies on.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Hopefully they\u2019ll end the war soon, but even that is not going to clear the problems immediately. To us as small business owners, middle class, hardworking Americans \u2026 [it] doesn\u2019t look promising at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Alam is a\u00a0California Local News Fellow<\/a>\u00a0with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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