The miserable weather has even affected your Subway sandwich as a nationwide shortage forces the fast-food chain to ration its cucumbers.
A sign at Blenheim Subway this morning read: "Due to critical supplies of cucumber we need to reduce the use of cucumber for some time."
Subway management has told stores nationwide to use less cucumber until supplies are restored.
Six-inch subs will now get two slices of cucumber instead of three, and foot-longs will get four instead of six.
Subway marketing manager David Herrick said there was a seasonal shortage of New Zealand-grown cucumbers because of cold growing conditions, which led Subway to look at sourcing them from Australia.
"But what's happened in Australia is that all the growing fields there were hit by serious flooding a couple of months ago. Therefore they can't supply us," said Mr Herrick.
Fresh Choice Springlands produce manager Kris North said most of the cucumbers were grown in glasshouses and the lack of sun had stopped the vegetables from growing.
"The country's been pretty short of sunlight lately making (vegetables) very expensive – if you can get them."
Mr North said Fresh Choice Springlands had "some cucumbers" but at $4.99 each they were more expensive than the usual seasonal average of $2.99.
There was only a half chance that daily vegetable orders would arrive because of the small supply, he said.
This was the worst year for vegetable supply in the seven years that he had worked with produce.
The last Marlborough commercial cucumber grower, Paul Kinzett, said he no longer grew the vegetable because it was too difficult to make money out of it.
"If I charged people what the cucumbers were worth they wouldn't pay it," he said.
New Zealand was moving towards buying all its fruit and vegetables from overseas, he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment