UNITED STATES & MEXICO - As any lover of Mexican cuisine will tell you, don’t mess with our guacamole. Unfortunately, it seems as though a tight avocado market has descended upon us, making it that much harder to enjoy a bowl of the good green stuff when we're out at restaurants. A report from Bloomberg has linked spiked avocado prices with a shortage of the green gold, meaning that foodservice operators are struggling to find supply.

“The whole country seems to be in love with the avocado,” Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said in an interview. “We’re continuing to work in our supply chain to hopefully not have such big swings.”

Bloomberg also cited an index of avocado prices from the Mexican government, which highlighted that Hass avocados from the Mexican state of Michoacán recently hit higher-than-average prices. For example, those avocados were twice as expensive as they were at the beginning of 2019.

The United States gets the bulk of its imported avocados from Mexico. Coming in at a whopping 2 billion pounds, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s data shows that this accounts for 87 percent of all avocado imports.

The cause of these high prices, the Mexican government asserted, is due to increased demand in the United States and a slight drop in production.

As restaurants have struggled to adapt to an avocado-less life, recipes featuring grilled tomatillo, zucchini, chilies, and oil have started cropping up. This mock guacamole recipe has been around for some time, but most substitute it out in lieu of the real thing.

Will foodservice operators look to Californian, Peruvian, or Chilean suppliers to bulk up orders? AndNowUKnow will continue to report.