Tomato supplier performance in 2026

When tomato supply slips

For eight months, buyers got almost everything they ordered. In five of those months the shortfall across every buyer came to fewer than 420 units. Then fill dropped below 95 percent for three straight months. The slide lined up with Florida’s summer break, when supply shifts to field crops in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, California and Michigan.

June through September carried a third of the year’s orders and two-thirds of its misses. The slip was specific to round and slicing tomatoes: from July through September, romas filled 99.3 percent and grape tomatoes 98.7 percent, while cherry tomatoes dipped to 96.1 percent.

That runs against the usual read on tomatoes, which treats the fall transition as the hardest stretch of the year. This fall fits that pattern: Georgia, Florida and Mexico are recovering from hurricanes and tropical storms, and supply is tight. But last fall, buyers in our data received 99.7 percent of their tomatoes in October and November. Their misses came in summer, a stretch when supply itself looked steady. Supply and delivered fill measure different things, and a buyer planning next season needs both. This data runs through September, so it doesn’t yet include this fall’s crunch.

Use the calendar below to plan when to watch your suppliers closely and when to have a backup lined up.

What a short case costs right now

Fill rates tell you how often you come up short. Prices tell you what it costs. Tomato prices at shipping point are running two to three times where they were a year ago, so the same miss rate now costs far more to cover. The fall transition is running late: rain and storms have hit Georgia, Florida’s panhandle and Baja, South Florida is still a few weeks from volume, and new duties on Mexican tomatoes under the Tomato Suspension Agreement add pressure. Expect tight supply and high prices for several more weeks, easing as Florida ramps up.

USDA Market News shipping-point prices, midpoint of the reported range, week ending October 26, 2026. Arizona prices include Mexican product crossing through Texas and California. Arizona mature greens rose another 39 percent in the latest week alone, to $37.18.

Take a buyer ordering 2,000 cases a week. At this summer’s 95.3 percent fill, that buyer comes up about 94 cases short every week. At this week’s Florida price of $48.65 a carton, that’s roughly $4,600 a week of tomatoes to replace for as long as prices stay at this level, before freight or the premium of buying at short notice. At last year’s price the same shortfall cost less than a third of that.

Three buyers, three different years

The market number hides how differently the year went for each buyer. Buyer B received 88.4 percent of its tomatoes in April, when seven of its eight suppliers shipped short; Buyer A got every case it ordered that month. Buyer C’s worst month was January. Buyer A had a near-perfect winter, then slid four months running to 91.9 percent in September.

None of them could tell from their own records whether a bad month was their suppliers or the whole market. That’s the question the rest of the market answers.

Same supplier, different service

One tomato supplier sold to two of these buyers over the same 12 months. Buyer C got 98.6 percent of the units it ordered and 94.9 percent of its order lines complete. Buyer B got 92.7 percent and 87.8 percent. If you only see your side, you can’t tell which experience is the supplier’s norm.

How to benchmark tomato supplier performance

Here’s how tomato supplier performance stacked up. Across the 20 supplier-buyer relationships in our data with at least 50 order lines, fill ran from 86.8 percent to 100 percent. The median was 97.8 percent, so a supplier delivering 96 percent sounds solid but trails 13 of the 20.

Watch order lines as well as units. One supplier in our data delivered 97.7 percent of units but completed only 94.3 percent of its order lines, about one short line in every 18.

Four questions to ask before winter programs are set

1. What were your fill rate and complete order lines for us last summer, month by month?
2. Where will our tomatoes come from November through March, and when does each region hand off?
3. When supply gets tight, how do you decide who gets short: by contract, by price or by order date?
4. If you short us, who covers, and how fast can they ship?

Then check the answers against the market. That’s what the Blue Book Supplier Scorecard is for.

Who delivered

Our data covers 38 tomato supplier relationships. Of the 17 with more than 100 order lines over the year, four delivered 99 percent or more of what buyers ordered:

• F&S Fresh Foods · Vineland, NJ · BBID 124667
• Patterson Repack · China Grove, NC · BBID 206370
• Legend Distributing · Glendale, AZ · BBID 296806
• Custom Pak · Immokalee, FL · BBID 151855