Costly greens: Why lettuce costs you more and when it will go back down

Lettuce is either hard to find in grocery stores or is a lot more expensive to purchase if you find some.

“It's probably triple the price it should be at this time of the year,” according to Benny Pearl, owner of D. Pearl and Sons Produce in Windsor.

Pearl says in his entire career running the family business he’s never had to pay this much for every kind of lettuce.

“It’s like something out of a nightmare,” he told CTV News.

Pearl says a carton of head lettuce with 24 heads in it now costs him $150 when this time last year it was $50.

Food experts say most of the lettuce Canadian consumers eat comes from California which suffered from a dry growing season. And, the lettuce crop in other regions is still growing.

“There's a transition between growing areas from California to Arizona. California is pretty well done. Arizona is not quite ready. So it's kind of in-between gears,” said Pearl. “The demand is there. The product isn't there.”

“We’re gonna be discontinuing it (salads) soon,” said Filip Rocca, owner of Mezzo Ristorante.

“We've had one of our suppliers saying that we were able to get it obviously it's double the price now, but (they) can't guarantee it either. And so we'll get a box of romaine lettuce and if it's all bad, how do we even serve it?” He said.

Rocca doubts patrons love lettuce and salads enough to pay for what it costs to plate.

“Who would order a $30 (plate) of romaine lettuce salad a Caesar salad?” Rocca questioned.

So he says they’ll just scratch salads and lettuce garnish from the menu, for now.

The good news is food experts say the lettuce shortage won’t last much longer.

“If I had to guess I’d say about a month's time I could see this being half price,” said Pearl.