Burger King stops using tomatoes in food items amid soaring retail prices

-

Popular fast food chain Burger King has stopped using tomatoes in its food preparations, joining the list of other quick service restaurant (QSR) chains like McDonald’s and Subway, amid soaring prices of the vegetable.

Burger King, operated by Restaurant Brands Asia in the country with 400 stores, in a message on the support page of its website cited “quality” and “supply” issues as reasons for removing tomatoes from its food servings.

“We, at Restaurant Brands Asia Ltd, have very high standards of quality as we believe in serving real and authentic food. Due to unpredictable conditions on the quality & supply of tomato crops, we are unable to add tomatoes to our food. Rest assured, our tomatoes will be back soon,” the message read.

It has requested customers to have “patience and understanding” for the situation.

Some Burger King India outlets have reportedly placed a notice with some humour, saying, “Even tomatoes need a vacation… we are unable to add tomatoes to our food.”

QSR chains are facing disruptions in their supply chain due to soaring tomato prices and struggling to find quality products. The retail price of tomato in some parts of the country is up to Rs 200 per kilogramme amid supply disruptions caused by heavy rains. This has forced the government to import tomatoes for the first time.

India is currently importing tomatoes from Nepal. Last week, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed Parliament that India has started importing tomatoes from Nepal amid a record- spike in prices in the domestic market.

In July, fast food chain McDonald’s had said it has stopped using tomatoes in its food preparations at most of the stores in northern and eastern parts of the country citing non-availability of quality products.

“Due to seasonal crop issues arising out of farm fields in a few regions, there are not enough quantities meeting our quality specifications available. To ensure our customers get the best quality we are known to serve, we are constrained to hold tomatoes for the time being,” a McDonald’s India – North and East spokesperson had said.

After that, Subway India also stopped using tomatoes to cope with the soaring prices in major cities.

According to government data, all-India average wholesale price of tomatoes came down to Rs 88.22 per kg on August 15, when compared with Rs 97.56 per kg a month ago. Similarly, all-India average retail price of tomatoes came down to Rs 107.87 per kg now from Rs 118.7 per kg a month ago, the data showed.

The arrival of the fresh tomato crop in Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh has started in wholesale mandis, and is likely to cause a dip in the prices.



from Firstpost India Latest News https://ift.tt/qUp8vEh
FP Staff

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Both COVID-19 vaccine doses needed for good protection against B16172 variant

-
It’s been a concerning few weeks in the UK, with the B16172 variant first taking hold and then spreading to become dominant. This more infectious form of the virus, initially identified in India, is what we’re now going to have to live with – unless it is out-competed by another variant in the future. Worryingly, experts had predicted that B16172 might be able to escape some of the effects of vaccines, which if true would threaten to derail the UK’s plans to finish lifting restrictions from the end of June. However, Public Health England (PHE) has looked at the ability of various variants to evade immunity and says that the UK’s vaccines remain effective against the variants circulating, including B16172. On the surface, this looks like good news. But delve a bit deeper, and things get more complicated, says Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia. PHE’s research found a little drop-off in protection against B16172 among people who were fully vaccinated.
Read more

New coronavirus variant emerge in India: How should our COVID response change?

-
Image
After genome sequencing of over 10,000 COVID-19 cases in India, researchers have discovered a new variant with two new mutations which may be better at evading the immune system. In 15-20 percent of samples from the Indian state of Maharashtra (the state accounting for 62 percent of cases in the country) a new, double mutation in key areas of the virus has been detected. These are now known as the E484Q and L452R mutations. What makes the variant different? Both these mutations are concerning because they are located in a key portion of the virus – the spike protein – that it uses to penetrate human cells. Spike proteins attach via a “receptor binding domain”, meaning the virus can attach to receptors in our cells. These new mutations include changes to the spike protein that make it a “better fit” for human cells. This means the virus can gain entry more easily and multiply faster. Given what we have seen with other similar mutations , it might also make it harder for our immu
Read more

Aditya L1 Mission: Spacecraft is nearing its final phase, says ISRO chief

-
Aditya L1 spacecraft is nearing its final phase, and manoeuvres to enter the L1 point are expected to be completed by January 7, 2024, according to ISRO Chairman S Somanath. “Aditya is on the way. I think it has reached almost its final phase,” the ISRO chief told PTI on the sidelines of an event organised at VSSC to commemorate the 60th year of the First Sounding Rocket Launch. Aditya L1, India’s first space-based mission to study the Sun, was successfully launched on September 2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota. The spacecraft, after travelling about 1.5 million km from Earth over 125 days, is expected to be placed in a Halo orbit around the Lagrangian point L1, considered closest to the Sun. He said that the last preparations for the spacecraft’s entry into the L1 point are currently underway incrementally.”Possibly by January 7th, the final manoeuvres will be done for entering into the L1 point,” Somanath added. Among other tasks, it will capture and tr
Read more