These restaurants are facing ingredient shortages. This is how they are doing

Mille and his wife own a small restaurant business in Craftsbury, Vermont called Chef Nadav LLC, which sells Mediterranean cuisine, among other things. Usually, he orders items like pitas weeks in advance from a food distributor. Sysco (RAISON). But on this occasion, he learned about 12 hours before the order arrived that it was not arriving.

After months of closures, restaurants have reopened. But that doesn’t mean they can bounce back right away. The Delta variant hinders the recovery of the industry. Many are still understaffed. And a stressed supply chain means some restaurateurs have problems purchasing ingredients. It could change what diners see on their plates.

The problem, he said, is that demand exceeds supply in some categories. Some of the vendors Sysco works with have struggled to fill orders, leaving Sysco short of some products, Hourican noted.

Given the upsurge in Covid-19 cases, demand for restaurant food could slow again if customers avoid dining out. For now, supply chain issues mean even more uncertainty during an already precarious time for restaurants.

“We’ve been hearing stories related to supply chain disruptions since the start of the pandemic,” said Erika Polmar, executive director of the Independent Restaurant Coalition, which advocates for independent restaurants. “There are certainly products that were circulating on the market and which [now] are not, ”she added.

“When the pandemic started, we saw the restaurant supply chain shut down,” Polmar said. “And it’s not something you can turn back on with the flip of a switch.”

Mille is still looking for suppliers in Boston to fill her pita orders. He also struggled to find chickpeas. He was able to find products that he buys from local suppliers. But he fears that once the summer is over and the harvest season is over, he will no longer be able to have these items delivered.

“I started contacting suppliers in Boston [for vegetables and other products] and opening accounts with local suppliers in Boston that do not ship to Vermont, ”he said. And it has increased its freezing capacity. “I just bought a new freezer… in anticipation of the shortages that inevitably happen,” he said.

He’s not the only one struggling to get ingredients. In New York City, Amanda Cohen, chef and owner of the famous vegetarian restaurant Dirt Candy, struggles to find the vegetables she needs.

For a specific beet dish, “we really wanted it to be sugar cane beets,” she said. Unlike other beets, when you cut sugar cane beets, you see pink and white rings – like a cane colored bull’s eye. But, Cohen wasn’t able to find the correct size sugarcane beets, so she switched to golden or red beets.

It might seem like a small change, but for Cohen, it isn’t. “Two years ago that would not have been acceptable,” she said. “We would have found the right sugar cane beets from a supplier… now they are simply not available.”

Cohen had to simplify the menu in other ways throughout the pandemic.

“We don’t do a ton of rainbow veg anymore, because those more elusive colors – they’re just not as available,” she said. And she had to make other adjustments. She started placing several orders with various distributors, assuming some will never come or be hours late. Cohen did not name the vendors she worked with, but noted that she did not receive her food from Sysco.

She also uses her refrigerator a lot more than in the past because she needs to keep vegetables fresh longer. Typically “our meeting [fridge] is a kind of storage place for the prepared food that we are going to use that evening. And now it’s almost like a grocery store. It’s a vegetable warehouse, ”she said.

“We would like to have fresh vegetables every day,” she noted. “And we can’t do that anymore.”