Americans’ obsession with avocados sent prices to a record high, but there’s good news for guacamole fans: relief could be on the horizon.
A confluence of factors drove the wholesale cost of Hass avocados from Mexico, the biggest supplier to the U.S., to more than double this year. U.S. consumers are eating more of the green stuff than ever before, and growers in Mexico and California were struggling to keep up with demand amid dry weather. But the tightness could start to ease next year as trees enter the higher-yielding half of a two-year cycle.
There are already signs of a reprieve. The wholesale cost has dropped more than 6 percent from a record reached earlier in July. At Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., while higher prices for the fruit eroded earnings earlier this year, bigger-than-expected supplies from Mexico this month means the gains have started to ease, Chief Financial Officer John Hartung said on an earnings call this week. Still, with a whopping 6.3 million uses of the hashtag #Avocado on Instagram, it doesn’t look like demand is going to slow down anytime soon.
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