Stew Leonard’s lettuce sales drop 11% during – Business News
Lettuce sales at Stew Leonard’s dropped 11% this week amid the multi-state food poisoning outbreak brought on by shredded iceberg lettuce – prompting the grocery store chain to stock up on greenhouse-grown lettuce as an different for involved clients, The Post has discovered.
As of Friday, the New York metro chain mentioned it was reducing back on its orders of bagged lettuce from manufacturers comparable to Andy Boy, Dole and Fresh Express, which carry a combine of greens that sometimes embody iceberg lettuce – regardless that they haven’t been implicated within the cyclospora outbreak that has hit over 30 states.
Stew Leonard’s lettuce sales have fallen by 11% this week, the company mentioned. Houston Chronicle by way of Getty Images
CEO Stew Leonard Jr. is placing a folksy contact on his bid to recoup misplaced lettuce sales — placing up indicators at his eight shops that can say, “My wife eats lettuce twice a day. I’m only buying greenhouse-grown lettuce, Stew.”
The transfer comes after the Food and Drug Administration warned customers to keep away from eating shredded iceberg lettuce from Mexico at Taco Bell areas in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia.
As the outbreak has dominated headlines this week — with some 7,000 contaminated people reporting explosive diarrhea, vomiting and bloating — customers have prevented the lettuce aisle, industry consultants say.
“People are calling in and reducing orders across the board because they think consumers won’t buy fresh produce,” Joelle Mosso of Western Growers, which represents produce growers in 4 states, advised The Wall Street Journal.
The eight-store chain is buying more greenhouse-grown lettuce as a outcome of large food poisoning outbreak involving lettuce. AP
In Michigan, which has seen the most important cluster of cyclospora infections to this point, authorities warned residents that bagged, prewashed salad kits have been dangerous. The state health division mentioned shopping for heads of lettuce and eradicating the outer leaves was safer.
Leonard’s greenhouse-grown lettuce comes from Little Leaf Farms, which markets its course of as “hands-free growing” that depends on rainwater. His shops additionally sell a private-label bundle referred to as Stew Leonard’s Organic Greenhouse-Grown Greenleaf Crunch, which is harvested within the Hudson Valley, based on the grocery store.
Leonard believes greenhouse-grown produce is now a safer guess than mass-produced greens grown in fields since they don’t depend on water irrigation systems that may very well be contaminated with human feces, which has been blamed for the parasitic outbreak.
Lettuce growers say their orders are drying up as retailers pull back.
The FDA has not recognized the provider of the lettuce behind the outbreak, however the Washington Post reported Thursday it’s Taylor Farms of Salinas, Calif.
The large produce grower and processor didn’t return a request for remark.
On Thursday, Leonard was nonetheless weighing whether or not to advertise greenhouse-grown manufacturers in his store, involved that it “might scare people,” he advised The Post.
By Friday, he had made up his thoughts to advertise the greenhouse-grown produce.
“Our lettuce sales continue to be negative today,” he mentioned.
