STEEP SALADBy Scott Moyers

Southeast Missourian

For a time, the customers at Ryan's Family Steak House noticed that the salad was beginning to taste a little different.

That's because the Cape Girardeau restaurant had tried to make their high-quality iceburg lettuce go a little further by mixing in some less expensive green-leaf.

They didn't go for it.

"Customers didn't like it," said Russ Neal, a Ryan's manager. "We went back to our regular lettuce pretty quick, but that's just something we wanted to try because the price of lettuce has gotten so high."

Managers at the Pasta House at Westfield Shoppingtown West Park say the prices they pay for lettuce has more than doubled over this time last year.

"But we can't change our recipe, we're known for our salad so we just have to pay it," said manager Becky Harris. "We had a fixed price on lettuce unless there was an act of God. Apparently, this is an act of God."

Short supplies

Lettuce is in short supply nationwide, with prices quadrupling in some spots. Blame it on freezing weather in lettuce-growing areas of Arizona and California, where quality and quantity have taken a dive this year.

The sticker shock is showing up at school cafeterias and restaurants, where lettuce is a staple not easily replaced. Locally, restaurants and grocery stores say the price is up to $60 a case and it is normally $20 a case.

"It's significant. Salad's on the menu every day," said Tim Weatherly, district manager at Chartwell's Dining Services, which serves more than 1,200 meals a day to students at Southeast Missouri State University.

Weatherly said he's paying three times what he normally pays for lettuce. In addition to mixing in spinach and other greens, they've also been buying bagged salad mixes, he said.

Weatherly has also noticed that more than the price has been affected.

"When it's cheap, it taste great, but when it's expensive, it doesn't," he said.

For many Americans, salad means iceberg lettuce, the industry behemoth even though a host of more exotic varieties have found a niche in supermarkets and restaurant salad bars.

Research shows Americans eat more than three times more iceberg than other kinds of lettuce -- about 25 pounds a year per person.

Lower yields

The shortage began with freezing weather that cut per-acre yields by more than half in parts of California, where more than half the nation's supply is grown. At the same time, many farmers grew less lettuce, fearing a drop in demand after Sept. 11 because many people dined out less.

The result has been high prices. In some parts of the country, iceberg lettuce has topped $3 per head at grocery stores, up from the regular $1 to $2.

Paul Harper, the co-manager of Schnucks in Cape Girardeau, said they're paying more than triple what they normally pay for lettuce.

"It's just skyrocketing," he said. "And we're not selling it for near what we should. It's just so expensive, we're not making any money on it at all."

A head of lettuce costs $1.99 now, but Harper said based on what they are paying, the price should be at about $2.99 or higher.

Harper said he hopes it will only last a matter of weeks.

Prices are expected to drop to their usual levels in the next two to three weeks as new supplies catch up to demand, said Ashraf Zaki, a market price reporter for the Agriculture Department in Forest Park, Ga.

"But right now it's pretty darn expensive," Zaki said.

Many schools are trying to adjust, and for some that means cutting out salads until the prices fall.

"We're just not going to have salads until the prices come down," said Shireen Eckelmann, cafeteria manager at Central High School in Cape Girardeau. "We're not going to buy any lettuce for a while."

Eckelmann said she still has her most recent shipment of lettuce, but when that's gone, salads won't be served to the roughly 200 students who eat at school for probably three or four weeks.

"The price has more than tripled," she said. "It's just not something that we feel we can spend that kind of money on at this time. This is the highest I've ever seen it in 15 years."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.