"freeze ruins tomatoes" news and stories

Will east-coast consumers need to start hording tomatoes? The situation isn't that dire yet, but the deep freeze that devastated Florida's tomato crop in January is leading to shortages at fast-food chains, supermarkets and restaurants.

The first sign of trouble is coming from Burger King, which has been experiencing "tomato outages." The chain has been running short on tomatoes for about week, leaving some disappointed customers without red ripe tomatoes on their Whoppers.

"There have been some spot outages of tomatoes in the Burger King system as a result of the severe weather conditions that recently affected tomato crops in the Southeastern U.S," Denise Wilson, Burger King's senior analyst of communications, tells ABC News. "We are working with our suppliers and distributors to closely monitor the situation and minimize these outages. Our guests are being notified of temporary outages by signage in the individual restaurants."