Suffolk News-Herald

Good news for tomato lovers across Suffolk: Your favorite red fruit-that-everyone-thinks-is-a-vegetable is back on fast food menus across the city!

After hurricanes ravaged parts of Florida over the first fall months, as well as some bad weather in Texas and California, several nationwide tomato stock companies were forced to raise their prices – and what they had wasn’t always good enough, said Jeff Chase, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Tidewater area manager.

&uot;The prices jumped sky-high,&uot; he said. &uot;It went from about $11 a case to $25 a case (cases weight about 10 pounds), and the quality wasn’t good for what we were paying for.&uot;

Around Thanksgiving, local KFCs typed up a memo letting customers know about the shortage on the chicken/tomato sandwiches.

&uot;We offered cheese as a substitute, and that seemed to be OK,&uot; Chase said. &uot;The prices stayed the same.&uot; Around Christmas, the new harvest came in, and surplus from the distributor U.S. Foods out of Charlotte, N.C. was back up to normal, allowing prices to drop again.

Local Wendy’s restaurants had the same problem, posting a notice in their drive-up menus about the shortage. However, since Dec. 13, the menu has been back to normal. Kevin Thompson, manager of the Burger King on Main Street, reported that his restaurant was not affected by the shortage.

&uot;It didn’t really affect our business, but we went from paying $15 to $60 for a case,&uot; said Baron’s Pub co-owner Tim Kendrick. &uot;The prices went higher and higher for a good month and a half, and the tomatoes kept getting smaller and smaller, but it’s starting to go back to normal now. We used tomatoes on our garnishes and our plates and that had to stop. people are more focused on the burger than with the garnish.&uot;