This is the best summary I could come up with:
NEW DELHI/CHENNAI, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Burger King has scrapped tomatoes from its wraps and burgers in many Indian outlets after prices more than quadrupled, the latest symptom of surging food inflation that is hitting consumers hard across the world’s most populous nation.
Rival Domino’s (DPZ.N), meanwhile, has tried bringing down prices to appeal to struggling consumers with a $0.60 pizza - its cheapest in the world.
Restaurant Brands Asia (RESR.NS), which operates Burger King in India, did not respond to requests for comment.
The pain is spreading with July retail inflation data released this week showing prices of vegetables rose 37% over a year.
As well as placing pressure on the margins of foreign chains operating in India’s nearly $5 billion market for fast-food restaurants, the price shocks pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ahead of a national election next year.
To manage the supply crisis, India has started tomato imports from Nepal, and has organised vans to distribute the staple at cheaper rates across the nation, with social media posts showing huge queues.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
so they lowered the prices of everything that no longer has tomatoes, right?
Haha, you’re cute
Well… If they remove it is to stay on the same price and avoid an increase or reduce the amount of increase. It cannot get cheaper…
They needed to increase it and this was to avoid it or to avoid a bigger increase.
To be cheaper that would require that the prices of the raw materials stayed the same which isn’t the case or I guess but I doubt it’s the case that they increased the prices of their products aka burgers but they saw the low sells and removed the tomato and reduced prices to increase sells.
They can reduce margins but that has nothing to do with the tomato removal and if needed they probably did reduce them up to certain point.
This is Burger King… This is not a bare necessity, they know of it gets expensive people simply won’t go. This is not like increasing the price of the raw food or monopoly product…were there is no alternative
I swear, it seems like getting a decent tomato is impossible nowadays. They’re all refridgerated and horrible, completely bland.
Expect it to increase for other vegetables as well as climate gets worse.
I’ve noticed that this is the case in pretty much all store bought tomatoes in the last few years, even the ugly, expensive heirloom ones. I wonder if they’re all just hydroponically grown, but I know there are a lot of factors to these and I’m probably eating a tomato that was harvested over a year ago.
I can often get a nice tomato from local farms, but even that’s not a guarantee.
grow your own
cherries still have some taste, and garden or ecological options still have flavour.
Mini-/Cherry tomatoes are pretty easy to grow in pots and don’t take much space. They can also be quite delicious. I started growing them a few years ago and haven’t stopped.
Yeah, honestly cherry tomatoes are the only ones that I find have any kind of discernable flavor nowadays.
SWEET
when tomatoes get more vacation days than Americans
Noooo, no climate catastrophe here nope not even a bit. Just a vegetable vacation mhmm.
Tomato went on vacation, never came back
Tomatoes and other crops got decimated by monsoon right?
Why not say it as it is? Why the need for such PR bullshit?
Pretty sure all of India knows why. Tomatoes have been fucked for a while now over there. Does everyone need to have a constant reminder than things suck? Like who cares if they’re having fun with it. Do you want an exact “we will not offer tomatoes until the price drops from 7¢ to 3¢ a tomato or lower.”? Like, lol. Plus saying Vacation means they’re coming back eventually also, so it’s not even bad messaging.
because a lot of adults in the modern world need everything spoonfed to them like children
Okay but am I the only one disturbed that somehow tomatoes are too expensive but pizza…which is made with tomato sauce…is getting cheaper? Unless…what is dominos making their sauce out of?
they dont produce with FRESH tomatoes.
plus half of it is oil.
. o O ( Delicious, delicious soylent green )
Tomato sauce doesn’t need fresh tomatoes. You can probably make decent enough sauce out of like 20+ year old dehydrated tomatoes and a bunch of salt, spices, sugar and a touch of MSG.
Isn’t ketchup considered a vegetable in Burgerland?
It’s not
No, it’s a vegetable smoothie, get it right.
Tomato sauce is produced in the hot months, sterilized, and stored in large aseptic containers to be used all year long, or more. This summer’s inflation isn’t inside the sauce yet.
TIL they have Burger Kings in India. I’m guessing for the non-Hindu population? Genuinely surprised.
Nope, its for everybody. McDonalds too. You can get a Maharaja Mac for one notable example. Localized menus exist for all the big chains that expand out.
To piggy-back on what others have said, the big franchises absolutely do regionalize their menus. A BK/McDonalds/KFC here in Romania always has a strong garlic sauce as an option, because that’s a normal part of our cuisine. You won’t find that in the UK, for example.
Sometimes the differences are small, sometimes they’re large. All depends on how different the local cuisine is from US cuisine.
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Not only. Remember this?
Oh god, unfortunately I do :))
Mujdei?
It sounds tasty, I’m jealous
I think they just don’t have beef and more vegetarian options. They’d be pretty stupid to open a restaurant in India and exclude nearly 80% of the population.
they have chicken burgers, you know? Also, horse can be used for burgers
Damn, that sucks.
“Even tomatoes need a vacation … we are unable to add tomatoes to our food,” read notices pasted at two Burger King India outlets.
So you’re telling me even Schrödinger’s fruit/vegetable gets more vacation time than me?
