Lettuce in the buffet?

[drwbrt]

I’m on day three of my first NCL cruise on the Bliss. I have still not seen a single piece of lettuce in the Garden Cafe buffet. They have a “salad bar” with a fair amount of toppings but no lettuce, spinach, spring mix—nothing. 
 

Is this standard on NCL? Is this protection from listeria or E.Coli or something? There’s salads in the MDR and the speciality restaurants. They have lettuce onboard. Did they not order enough for the wait-service venues AND the buffet? I’m so confused. We even asked, thinking maybe it was kept behind the salad station for some reason. The star said, “no, there’s no lettuce.”

 

Is this standard for NCL?

[cruiseny4life]

13 minutes ago, drwbrt said:

I’m on day three of my first NCL cruise on the Bliss. I have still not seen a single piece of lettuce in the Garden Cafe buffet. They have a “salad bar” with a fair amount of toppings but no lettuce, spinach, spring mix—nothing. 
 

Is this standard on NCL? Is this protection from listeria or E.Coli or something? There’s salads in the MDR and the speciality restaurants. They have lettuce onboard. Did they not order enough for the wait-service venues AND the buffet? I’m so confused. We even asked, thinking maybe it was kept behind the salad station for some reason. The star said, “no, there’s no lettuce.”

 

Is this standard for NCL?

It's probably due to cost/supply chain. Lettuce is insanely expensive right now. 

 

Here's but one article about everyone's fake Italian chain's struggle with lettuce:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/business/olive-garden-lettuce/index.html

 

Tl:dr (also known as cruise ship internet) - lettuce cost Darden (owner of Olive Garden) an extra $4 - $5 million dollars in one quarter.

[drwbrt]

3 minutes ago, cruiseny4life said:

It's probably due to cost/supply chain. Lettuce is insanely expensive right now. 

 

Here's but one article about everyone's fake Italian chain's struggle with lettuce:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/business/olive-garden-lettuce/index.html

 

Tl:dr (also known as cruise ship internet) - lettuce cost Darden (owner of Olive Garden) an extra $4 - $5 million dollars in one quarter.

$4-$5m?!?! That’s a lot of lettuce for lettuce. It’s makes sense to charge a la carte for that. Coming clutch with the info. Thanks!

[uneamie]

56 minutes ago, drwbrt said:

I’m on day three of my first NCL cruise on the Bliss. I have still not seen a single piece of lettuce in the Garden Cafe buffet. They have a “salad bar” with a fair amount of toppings but no lettuce, spinach, spring mix—nothing. 
 

Is this standard on NCL? Is this protection from listeria or E.Coli or something? There’s salads in the MDR and the speciality restaurants. They have lettuce onboard. Did they not order enough for the wait-service venues AND the buffet? I’m so confused. We even asked, thinking maybe it was kept behind the salad station for some reason. The star said, “no, there’s no lettuce.”

 

Is this standard for NCL?

So I guess now we can anticipate an "upcharge" for lettuce or bring our own if it comes to that.  Wonder if they will confiscate it upon boarding like they do liquor. LOL 

[rxlowry]

That is ridiculous!  I would be so annoyed as my go to lunch is a huge salad in the buffet.  I really hope to have salad available on my cruise next month.  I can't imagine what I'm going to hear is not available next!  

[zqvol]

11 minutes ago, rxlowry said:

That is ridiculous!  I would be so annoyed as my go to lunch is a huge salad in the buffet.  I really hope to have salad available on my cruise next month.  I can't imagine what I'm going to hear is not available next!  

Walk through your local grocery to get an idea of all the things that are in short supply, it has nothing to do with cruise ships

[schmoopie17]

35 minutes ago, uneamie said:

So I guess now we can anticipate an "upcharge" for lettuce or bring our own if it comes to that.  Wonder if they will confiscate it upon boarding like they do liquor. LOL 

Just don't use a Ziploc bag.

Too soon?

[pandncruisers]

We are currently on b2b on the breakaway and have had plenty of lettuce in all of the restaurants

[BirdTravels]

1 hour ago, drwbrt said:

Did they not order enough for the wait-service venues AND the buffet? I’m so confused. We even asked, thinking maybe it was kept behind the salad station for some reason. The star said, “no, there’s no lettuce.”

The order was correct. But, suppliers failed to fulfill their contract. What lettuce was available was divided between ships at central provisioning and on those ships,,,, lettuce was allocated to specific restaurants. 
 

Last summer, one of the missing items was coconut syrup for drinks. If you look at tropical drink recipes, many have coconut syrup and could not be made

 

In October, one of the missing items was hash browns. You could get them at the MDR but the buffet was serving French fries with your eggs…. Which led to a French fry shortage later in the cruise. 
 

These are the time you are living through. 

[laudergayle]

54 minutes ago, zqvol said:

I can't imagine what I'm going to hear is not available next!  

@zqvol…this is not your quote…evidently I don’t know how to properly “quote” on CC.  It is @rxlowry

 

Eggs.  True, there are major supply and cost problems. And these temporary, unexpected impacts are acceptable.  What’s becoming not acceptable, at least for me, is the incidence of reductions and price increases.  

Edited January 24, 2023 by laudergayle

[MrsK]

Did you try looking in the burger/hotdog section of the buffet?  Quite often they have lettuce there but nowhere else.

[rxlowry]

1 hour ago, zqvol said:

Walk through your local grocery to get an idea of all the things that are in short supply, it has nothing to do with cruise ships

I went shopping today.  Tons of lettuce and all produce.  

[pandncruisers]

As I said previously there is plenty of lettuce on the breakaway last week and this week

[sailorusvi]

26 minutes ago, pandncruisers said:

As I said previously there is plenty of lettuce on the breakaway last week and this week

different distributors.  What you can get in NOLA might be different than in NYC. What you can get in NOLA and NYC could be different on what you can get in Miami.   Even though it's the same company, they might deal with different suppliers as distributors are locally based.  Sometimes there is crossover, but not always.

 

The struggle is real throughout the food industry. What should be seemingly to be easy obtain can be hard to get in different parts of the country.

[sjacobs11]

We are also onboard. The crew said the provisioner didn’t deliver their order. We are in Cabo today and they were bringing tons of produce and fruit onboard. 

[drwbrt]

2 hours ago, MrsK said:

Did you try looking in the burger/hotdog section of the buffet?  Quite often they have lettuce there but nowhere else.

No lettuce for burger either. 

[drwbrt]

33 minutes ago, sjacobs11 said:

We are also onboard. The crew said the provisioner didn’t deliver their order. We are in Cabo today and they were bringing tons of produce and fruit onboard. 

 

lettuce was amongst the things coming onboard. 
 

also, 👋 fellow passenger. 

[Laszlo]

I can sympathize, on the GA 12 day their was zero soft serve. It just never made it to the ship

[BirdTravels]

2 hours ago, laudergayle said:

@zqvol…this is not your quote…evidently I don’t know how to properly “quote” on CC.  It is @rxlowry

 

Eggs.  True, there are major supply and cost problems. And these temporary, unexpected impacts are acceptable.  What’s becoming not acceptable, at least for me, is the incidence of reductions and price increases.  

Yes. I totally agree. 

 

Eggs have gone from $0.79 a dozen to nearly $5.00 a dozen around my house. That is becoming not acceptable, at least for me, is the incidence of reductions and price increases.  

[debenson0723]

Happy to see you are getting your lettuce on board.  My son works from home and he likes to make bag salads for his lunch. I was at the market on Sunday to pick up a few for the week and...you guessed it, no bag salads of any kind.  Just came from Costco a few minutes ago and they did have some in stock but the variety was very slim.  He'll just have to find something else for a while until the salads are available again.

[drwbrt]

I applaud NCL for getting so many provisions here in Cabo. If what @sjacobs11wad told is accurate the lettuce in the buffet only was the only thing I noticed. Burgers in The Local had lettuce. I had salad in MDR. That’s why it felt weird to me. I didn’t bring it up to complain, it just felt weird. They hid it well and I bet there is salad in the buffet tonight/tomorrow.

[New2cruise2022]

3 hours ago, MrsK said:

Did you try looking in the burger/hotdog section of the buffet?  Quite often they have lettuce there but nowhere else.

We tried there. And it was asked and answered by crew. The only lettuce was seen sparingly in other restaurants. 

[New2cruise2022]

1 hour ago, Laszlo said:

I can sympathize, on the GA 12 day their was zero soft serve. It just never made it to the ship

I can live with out lettuce 🥬, but you want to stand between me and ice cream 🍦 and we are gonna have words. 
 

My 17 year old son said, “I don’t even like salad, but now that I know I can’t have it, I want it!”

 

I will remind him that he said that when the salad bar is stocked tonight. 

[travelmama06]

We had lots of lettuce on the epic last week 

[Bob121]

Hope the lettuce is back. Is the Bliss closing the buffet after dinner, or are there still evening snack hours?