Restaurants prepare to take guac off the menu and make substitutions after US bans Mexican avocados

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Restaurants across the Unites States have started preparing for a supply crunch in avocados after the US banned imports of the fruit from Mexico, which ships about 80 percent of America’s supply.  

Alfonso Brito, who owns two Mexican eateries in Utah, said his businesses were already reeling from the pandemic, so the coming avocado shortage and rising costs will serve as yet another blow to his livelihood.

He told KJZZ that he has had to get creative to make the most of his limited avocado supplies, testing out new guacamole recipes not made from avocados. 

‘It look like guacamole. You have to tell your customers that it’s not guacamole,’ Brito said. ‘It’s not avocados, it’s zucchini, but also it’s a great option, you know. Also with the cactus or spinach.’ 

Brito, other restaurateurs and shippers expect their supplies to run out in the next two weeks while also contending with avocado prices that have doubled and are expected to keep going up as the last of the shipments from Mexico are set to arrive.

The US had banned imports of avocados from Michoacán, Mexico, the sole state allowed to export to America, after a US inspector was threatened over the phone amid continued violence at the lucrative Mexican farms at the hands of the cartel.

While the US said it has reached a deal that could allow avocados from the neighboring Mexican state of Jalisco to be exported to the US later this year, it has done little to curb the worries of American businesses.  

Brito told KJZZ that prices have been fluctuating everyday, and he expects things to get worse. 

‘It raised like 50 to 60 percent,’ he said. ‘I can find avocados for 48 dollars today, but then next it’s like 58 and then next day it’s 80 dollars.’ 

Francisco Garcia, owner of La Casa Garcia in Anaheim, California, said he’s already seen prices skyrocket. He is preparing to pay $150 per case of avocados compared to when he used to pay $30 last year. 

‘[I spend] three to four hundred dollars for all the avocados,’ Garcia told CBS LA about his usual supply. ‘If they raise it, it will be $2,000.’

Despite the rising costs, the restaurateur vowed not to raise the prices for his customers, who he said were like family. 

‘They’ve been paying $4 to $5 a guacamole,’ he said. ‘I ain’t going to raise it $25 to $30. People ain’t going to buy it… They’re my customer for years and years. I’ll take the loss.’ 

Jose Leon, owner of Jalapeno’s in Peoria, Illinois, said he usually buys Mexican avocados for $57, but expects the prices to go up to $200 next week. 

He told CI Proud that rather than raise prices, he has already taken guacamole off his menu. 

‘If we can’t find them, we’re just not going to serve it,’ Leon said.

‘We’re not going to pay that number to start off, and if we can’t find it, we’ll just take our guacamole off the menu until we get avocados back to the states.’ 

Jonny Hernandez, a San Antonio restaurateur who owns 11 eateries, told Kens5 he has enough avocados for two weeks and expects dishes featuring the food to increase by 50 percent.  

‘It’ll start affecting prices tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’re already dealing with labor and supply issues… That is going to compound everything.’ 

Some restaurants may run out of avocados faster than others, with Piero Sanchez, manager of the Baja Cantina in Los Angeles, saying supplies may run out for smaller restaurants in two to three days. 

‘Realistically we have enough for two to three days until we start to see our pricing kind of change,’ Sanchez told Reuters.  

‘For us, we’ll find a viable solution. We’ll find a substitute. Or even that if we need to take a hit, we’ll take it. But we’re hoping this crisis or this situation ends very soon and we can get more supply out here and give restaurants a break.’ 

Jim Shanley – president of Shanley Farms, a large avocado producer in California, said he doesn’t believe the ban on Mexico will last long because it would be impossible for US growers to keep up with the demand. 

Although the US created the original Hass avocado that most enjoy around the world, Mexico replicated the fruit and harvests it in much greater volume, shipping out about 1.5 million tons a year. By comparison, California produces only 188 thousand tons a year. 

‘The avocado industry is not set up to be able to provide as many avocados as the U.S. market demand without the Mexican supply,’ Shanley told KSBY.

Shanley echoed fears that prices would skyrocket in the coming weeks and warned that the limited supply would leave customers avoiding avocados after the price hike. 

‘I don’t want the guacamole in the restaurant I’m going to eat at going to $25. Nobody will buy it,’ Shanley said. 

Michael Wolfe, owner of Avocado Shack in Morro Bay, California, said he’s already preparing for the worst-case scenario.

‘I got on the phone with my organic supplier and said give me some Santa Barbara avocados at least. I got $1,200 worth of avocados coming in tomorrow and I’ll still run out of these but they will be the best quality,’ Wolfe told KSBY. 

Chipotle Mexican Grill said it has enough supply to last about a month. 

‘We’re working closely with our suppliers to navigate through this challenge,’ the company’s Chief Financial Officer Jack Hartung said in a statement.

‘Our sourcing partners currently have several weeks of inventory available, so we’ll continue to closely monitor the situation and adjust our plans accordingly,’ Hartung said.

The company did not say how much the prices for its dishes that use avocados would go up, only that the company has already been contending with higher costs. 

Taco Bell said it would be able to avoid impacts from the suspension due to how it gets its guacamole.

‘Taco Bell is not impacted by the US halting avocado imports from Mexico. We import guacamole and not whole avocados, which is not impacted by the current ban,’ the company explained in a statement.

Moe’s Southwest Grill, another popular Mexican-food chain in the US, declined to comment.

Mission Produce, the biggest distributor of avocados in the U.S., said the company is doing what it can to ‘mitigate the impact as much as possible,’ including trying to source for additional product around the world. 

Steve Taft, president of Eco Farms in California, said he has been hearing from wholesale clients worried about running out of the key ingredient for menu items like guacamole, avocado toast and Cobb salad. 

Michoacán is ‘the big bully on the block. They dictate the market, so we have to be careful not to get carried away,’ Taft said, according to Bloomberg.

He expects prices to rise by as much as 25 percent depending on the length of the ban.

Avocado prices hit $26.23 per nine-kilogram box, double what they cost last year. The price is nearing the highest in two decades, behind only a brief spike above $30 last July because of global demand and the end of the growing season in Mexico.

Guacamole lovers have seen the price of a single avocado rise to as much as $2.50 at some supermarkets from just $1.24 last month. They cost 99 cents in January 2021. 

Raul Lopez, the Mexico manager of the market research company Agtools, told the Washington Post that prices would only continue to rise as the US depletes its avocado supply amid the suspension. 

‘In a few days, the current inventory will be sold out and there will be a lack of product in almost any supermarket,’ Lopez said. 

The US halted the avocado shipments after a health worker had been carrying out an inspection in Uruapan, a city in Michoacán, a gang-plagued region that’s among Mexico’s deadliest states. It has for decades been used as a drug-trafficking hub and the situation has only worsened amid frequent armed struggles for power between rival cartels. 

Health officials did not disclose the specific nature of the threat, but it was serious enough to pause imports pending the results of an investigation by the US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and and Department of Agriculture, the statement said.

Lopez told the Post the inspector had allegedly found avocados from the state of Puebla in the Michoacán facility that were intended to be exported to the US, which is not allowed.  

‘The people from the facility tried to intimidate and then [threaten] the inspector, so he reported it to the USDA, then they decided to pull out all the inspectors and close the border indefinitely,’ Lopez explained. 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador dismissed the threat received by a the health inspector as a ruse concocted by US President Joe Biden in order to protect American growers from Mexican competition. 

‘The truth is there is always something else behind it, an economic or commercial interest, or a political attitude,’ López Obrador said.

‘They don’t want Mexican avocados to get into the United States, right, because it would rule in the United States because of its quality.’  

Mexican drug cartel members have been for years threatening members of the lucrative avocado industry.

Michoacán growers in 2019 began taking up arms to protect themselves against thieves and drug cartels robbing them of their ‘green gold,’ using AR-15 rifles to defend themselves against deadly cartels.

Soaring US consumption has lifted the region out of poverty in the past decade, with Mexico in 2020 exporting more than $2.7billion of the fruit, according to Statista.  

But the cash flow has also brought growing rates of extortion, kidnapping, and avocado theft.

The situation has become so dangerous that hundreds of avocado growers have formed a self-defense group called Pueblos Unidos to protect their fields. 

It isn’t the first time the US Department of Agriculture’s officials have been threatened.

In August 2019, a team of inspectors were ‘directly threatened’ in Ziracuaretiro, a town just west of Uruapan in Michoacán. While the agency didn’t specify what happened, local authorities said a gang robbed the truck the inspectors were traveling in at gunpoint.

The US lifted a ban on Mexican avocados in 1997, decades after it was implemented in 1914 to prevent weevils, scabs and pests from entering U.S. orchards. 

The dangerous situation in gang-controlled Michoacán was again highlighted in January, when footage showed drug cartels using drones to drop explosives onto inhabitants of a Tepalcatepec forest.

It was the latest demonstration of unchecked violence in the region as the drones, controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, rained down explosives on the shacks.

Footage from the attack emerged just weeks after the nearby city of Chinicuila in Michoacán reported that roughly half of its population fled, many illegally into the US, to escape the cartel’s violence.