Stores dealing with strawberry shortage

Suburban grocery stores have struggled to keep strawberries in stock this past month, but store owners say the situation is slowly starting to improve and should be back to normal in another week or two.

Bad weather in Florida and California is to blame for the strawberry shortage that started in October, and then got really bad in November and early December, local produce managers say.

It happened during a transition time, when most local grocery stores switch from buying California strawberries to Florida and Mexican strawberries. Cold, wet weather hit as California's season was winding down, and then an unusually cold November got Florida off to a slow start, store owners said.

Adi Mor, CEO and produce buyer at Mundelein-based Garden Fresh Market, normally orders 50-100 cases of strawberries for each of his five suburban grocery stores. This week, he'll get 30 cases if he's lucky, he said. At one point, he was only able to buy four cases.

Mor, who buys the produce fresh at the Chicago market each day in the pre-dawn hours, said grocery stores are being charged high prices for the strawberries they do get - as much as $5 per container. That puts stores in a tough situation, because they can't sell it for much more than that without upsetting customers.

"It's much bigger demand than supply right now," Mor said. "Florida will have a very good crop, but it's gonna be another 10 days (until supply returns to normal). We're in between the gap."

Steve Jarzombek, vice president of produce merchandising at Mariano's, agreed that it's been tough to keep strawberries in stock lately and they've been forced to put up signs apologizing to customers. But he said the situation is improving.

"We're not back to 100 percent fill rates, but we're getting there," Jarzombek said. "We're past the worst of it and it's going to get better."

The produce business is always at the mercy of Mother Nature, he added.

"Things could change," Jarzombek said. "You know how winter is."

Contrary to what suburban produce buyers say, strawberry grower associations in California and Florida describe the year as "normal" and weren't aware of any strawberry shortages.

Chris Christian, senior vice president of the California Strawberry Commission, said they've had no major weather problems and strawberry growers are having "a normal November and December." The peak months for strawberries are June, July and August.

"For Florida and Mexico, this is the start of the season. This is the month when it ramps up quite a bit. It's probably just a slow start type of thing," she said.

The USDA numbers show that shipment numbers were lower than last year at this time for all domestic and imported strawberries.