Bay Area grocery stores are facing shortage of leafy green vegetables. Shoppers, who are huge fans of salads or avocado, are upset over the latest updates on fresh vegetable prices.

“Prices right here, right now, you are going to start getting sticker shock. More than twice the price as what you should be seeing this time of year,” said produce expert Michael Marks.

“Iceberg lettuce, leaf lettuce, red leaf…you name a row of crop vegetable and it’s been hard hit,” he said.

Restaurants in the region may take the hardest hit as they could see the price of their fresh veggies, doubles.

“You may not see the prices increase, but they are going to take it in their profits because you know lettuce and tomatoes, that’s a short term crop and they can’t just go up and down with their prices when the prices fluctuate like that,” said Marks.

Who is the culprit? Blame the wet weather.

“It is all because of the rain. The rain not last week, not last month, but the rain three months ago,” said Marks. “Three months ago we should have been planting crops that we should be harvesting now. We can’t harvest those crops because they weren’t planted.”

People end up buying these vegetables for twice the actual price and what they are getting may not even be all that good.

“When you see really low prices, a farmer out there is going to put any lettuce they see into that box, even if it just looks like a head of lettuce it’s going in the box,” said Marks. “So you see really low quality when you see these really high prices.”

Other vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower can be scarcely found. According to food suppliers the market should start to stabilize within a few weeks, as the weather warms up.

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