The New York Times reports that bagel purveyors in the city are grappling with a cream cheese shortage that "is threatening one of the most treasured local delicacies: a fresh bagel with cream cheese."
According to the piece, "New York bagel sellers go through thousands of pounds of cream cheese every few weeks. The recipe for the beloved spread, which according to the Kraft Heinz Company originated in New York sometime in the 1870s, is fairly simple: lactic acid, pasteurized milk and cream. Many shops start their mixes with Philadelphia cream cheese, a Kraft Heinz brand, which arrives on huge pallets."
But those pallets have been coming up short over the past few weeks, throwing bagel shops into a frenzy.
"Problems have popped up at every point along the supply chain that brings cream cheese from factories to the morning bagel … including a labor shortage in the manufacturing sector that began at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, a lack of truck drivers because of resistance to vaccine mandates and a scarcity of packaging supplies … Jenna Thornton, a Kraft Heinz spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company was seeing a spike in demand for several of its products. To accommodate the increases, she said, the company had been shipping out 35 percent more product than last year to food service partners, including bagel shops."
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The horror.
If there ends up being a concurrent lox shortage, I'm really going to get upset.
