Workers carry buckets of tomatoes to a drop off point after a January freeze that hit Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal | A shortage of tomatoes
from weather-battered Florida is forcing restaurants and supermarkets
to ration supplies amid soaring prices.

Fast-food chains such as Wendy’s, a unit of Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc.,
have stopped automatically including tomatoes in sandwiches; now
customers have to know to ask.

Even then, consumers might not get what they usually do. At Lloyd’s, a
white-tablecloth restaurant across from the Chicago Mercantile
Exchange, signs went up this week warning that only plum tomatoes are
available.

Subway is continuing to offer tomatoes on its sandwiches but the chain is using different varieties to ensure it has enough.

Fresh tomatoes are in short supply because of the unusual spell of freezing temperatures that hugged Florida in January. The cold temperatures that dented citrus production also destroyed roughly 70 percent of the tomato crop in Florida, which is the largest source of U.S.-grown fresh tomatoes this time of year.

Reggie Brown, executive vice president of Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a Maitland, Fla., trade group, said Tuesday that a 25-pound box of tomatoes is trading for $30, compared with $6.45 a year ago.

Some restaurants have been told they would have to spend up to $45 for a box of tomatoes in recent days. “Doesn’t matter though, because there isn’t anything to sell,” said Mr. Brown, who calculates the state’s shipments are running at about 30 percent of normal.

Florida’s weather woes aren’t having much impact on prices of tomato-derived products, such as ketchup and sauce. Many of the country’s processing tomatoes are grown in California but these tomatoes have different qualities than those typically eaten fresh.

Prices of fresh tomatoes are expected to fall sharply by April as farmers in southern Florida begin harvesting a new crop, the condition of which so far appears to be normal. Still, Florida growers worry that they will have permanently lost even more market share to Mexican-grown tomatoes by then.

According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, about one-third of fresh vegetables such as tomatoes, bell peppers and sweet corn consumed in the U.S. this time of year come from Florida farms. About two-thirds of this type of produce is imported, and most of that is from Mexico. In recent weeks, weekly vegetable shipments from Mexico to the U.S. have soared by as much as 50 percent over year-ago levels, according to the USDA.

Publix Super Markets Inc., a Lakeland, Fla.-based chain, said Tuesday that it is paying more to import tomatoes from Mexico due to the Florida shortage.