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"  A burger with all the fixings just lost a key player. On Feb. 11, all 6,500 Wendy&amp;#039;s locations in the U.S., posted signs at their drive-through windows and counters announcing that customers must specially request a tomato slice on all burgers and chicken sandwiches. Hurricanes, hard freezes, blight. The world can be tough for a tomato. And thanks to an unusually cold winter in both Florida and Mexico, our country&amp;#039;s main sources of the red stuff, times are tough for Wendy&amp;#039;s customers, too. These cold blasts from Mother Nature are to blame for halving the normal yield and doubling prices of tomatoes, making them too precious for automatic inclusion in your fast-food sandwich. According to the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, it&amp;#039;s highly unusual for Florida and Mexico to experience freezes in the same season.  McDonald&amp;#039;s said &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s business as usual,&amp;quot; despite the tomato shortage, while Burger King reports &amp;quot;temporary spot outages&amp;quot; until tomatoes that meet their standards in those markets become available. Dairy Queen corporate said it informed their franchisees that tomatoes will be harder to get, but didn&amp;#039;t direct them to stop serving the slices on their sandwiches. We also contacted Subway restaurant headquarters to see if it&amp;#039;s stores have been affected, but have not heard back yet. This year&amp;#039;s freeze in Mexico also damaged crops of cucumbers, bell peppers, zucchini, and green beans, causing shortages and higher prices for those items, as well. Salads and salsas are going to cost a pretty penny for a while, we can only assume, but fresh veggie fans can take heart \u2014 growers expect a full tomato crop yield by April. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve heard the shortage will continue through mid-April,&amp;quot; said Wendy&amp;#039;s Director of Communications, Kitty Munger. &amp;quot;Once the new crop is in, it&amp;#039;ll be just a few days until customers see [tomatoes] in stores again.&amp;quot; Make your own burger at home with all the tomato slices you can handle using one of our 25 juicy grilled burger recipes. The U.S. fast-food industry has weathered tomato shortages in the past. In 2010, a January freeze devastated the tomato crop, killing about 70% of the state&amp;#039;s yield and more than tripling the price of common slicing tomatoes. And in late 2005, hurricanes ripped through Florida, causing similar damage to the winter crops of 2006. In both instances, Wendy&amp;#039;s resorted to the by-request tomato policy. Subway restaurants also rationed tomatoes during the shortage of 2006. Since many people pull tomatoes off their sandwiches anyway, do you think all fast food restaurants should institute this by-request policy to cut down on food waste? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/food/news/a38448/wendys-burgers-tomato-shortage/>