Surging tomato prices put Tucson restaurants in a pickle

Chef-owner Jacki Kuder said she created the menu back in March, "before the great tomato crisis" that surged year-over-year prices nearly 40% and pushed the cost in April by more than 12% over March, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released Tuesday. 

"I put tomatoes all over the damn menu," Kuder said of the seafood-centric restaurant at 2564 E. Grant Road that she has run for four years. "Our menu is set until October. I would say probably 30 to 40% of our dishes have some sort of tomato component in them."

At Guadalajara Original Grill's two locations — 1220 E. Prince Road and 7360 N. Oracle Road — servers prepping the tableside salsa are being encouraged to take special care with the tomatoes to limit waste.

"You know, we just got to control more food costs and usage and how they handle our (ingredients)," GM Erick Godoy explained. "That is just the way it is."

Meanwhile, at Locale Neighborhood Italian, 60 N. Alvernon Way, where tomatoes are central to nearly everything on the menu, from pastas to the popular bruschetta, owner Deborah Tenino said she's seen prices jump 53% over the past month. Her overall produce costs are up 27% over what she paid in 2025, she said. 

"For a business that works in margins, that's a lot," said Tenino, who with her KE Hospitality Group partners Nicholas Kreutz and German Tapia also owns Contigo Latin Kitchen and Miramonte.

Tomatoes, the quintessential summertime vegetable, has become one of the most expensive, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' just-released Consumer Price Index.

The report showed that fresh vegetables as a whole in April rose 1.7% from March, with tomatoes far outpacing citrus, which jumped 3.1% since March. Lettuce, meanwhile, saw the most significant month-over-month price decrease, dropping 4.9%.

Higher food costs played a significant role in pushing the inflation rate to 3.8%, up from March's 3.3%, with skyrocketing fuel costs driving most of the increase, according to the report released last Tuesday. Average gas prices late last week shot to $4.53 a gallon nationwide and $4.84 in the Tucson area, according to AAA.  

While fuel costs played a role in the higher price of tomatoes, Mother Nature was a bigger culprit, said Jaime Chamberlain, president of his family's Nogales-based produce distribution company Chamberlain Distributing Inc. 

The company sources its produce from Mexican farmers in Sonora and Sinaloa, which experienced a warm winter and record heat in March.

"This year was a phenomenon. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in the 39 years that I've been in business," Chamberlain said. "I think it's been really, really nuts. ... We've had an extraordinarily dry, warm winter where we had little real rain, and we're experiencing some (viral and fungal) disease that we had never seen before."

America gets 70% of its fresh tomatoes from Mexico, which pays a 17.09% tariff on most tomatoes. 

Meanwhile, in America's wintertime tomato-growing regions around Florida, farmers experienced freezing conditions that reduced their yields, driving up prices across the board, Chamberlain said. Higher costs for fertilizer, pesticides and fuel are adding to the increases of produce as a whole, he said. 

"Everybody seems to focus on tomatoes, but every single commodity was at extraordinarily high prices this year, every commodity," Chamberlain said. "I sold green beans for $60 a box. I've never sold green beans for $60 a box for as long a period as I sold them for. Squashes were very, very high. Every single chile pepper, whether it was a Serrano or jalapeños, was very, very high for long periods of time."

"You have these climate changes that come along every five, 10 years, and you see these phenomena where you have less volume out of Mexico, less volume out of Florida, less volume in general," he added. "And obviously prices are going to spike. It's the same demand, but they're going to spike because there's less product around."

In its weekly report released on Wednesday, the USDA forecast showed that prices for Mexican tomatoes were dropping, with vine-ripened varieties selling last week for as low as $18.95 to a high of $38.95 a case.

Kingfisher's Kuder said one of her produce suppliers said he expects to see overall prices drop, "but I don't think we will see $30 to $35 a case anytime soon."

Over at Locale, which opened in late 2020, Tenino said they have no plans to raise menu prices to offset the cost increases.

"We have less profitability. I think that's ultimately what happens, because you can't really keep raising the price; people won't accept it," she said. "And you can't not sell tomatoes, right? So we're stuck between a rock and a hard place."

Amelia's Mexican Kitchen chef-owner Jose Contreras said his servers are now asking guests if they want complementary chips and salsa instead of automatically bringing it to the table.

"If they don't want it, we don't put it on the table," Contreras said. "I think the main thing is that when we serve that salsa, make sure that it's not going to waste."

Contreras goes through almost 30 boxes of tomatoes a week between his two restaurants — 5553 E. Grant Road and 5851 N. Oracle Road — making his popular roasted tomato, tomatillo and traditional molcajete salsas and pico de gallo. Last week, he paid $45 a box, about half of what he paid two weeks ago, but nowhere near the $15, $20 he paid in January.

Over at Feast at 3719 E Speedway, chef-owner Doug Levy took tomatoes off the daily specials until prices went down from the nearly $100 he was spending on a case in April to the $36 he recently paid.  

"You try to cut your losses," he said.

Since he opened 25 years ago, Levy has focused on hyper-seasonal ingredients, creating an ever-evolving menu based on what was in peak season. With the slower summer season ahead, he worries that higher prices might impact his bottom line. 

"I guess you would say the jury's out. I mean, we've made it through 25 summers, so I think we'll make it through this one," he said. "But I also know that if I were a brand new business and the prices of my ingredients jumped anywhere from 30 to 400%, it would make a big difference."