Canned pumpkin pie filling will be hard to find again

TAMPA - For the second year in a row, fans of open-and-pour pie mixes may look to their grocery store shelves and see only emptiness where there should be cans of pumpkin pie mix.

There’s a shortage.

Blame bad weather in the single village that’s home to the single company controlling 80 to 90 percent of the nation’s pumpkin pie mix: Morton, Ill., population 16,000.

“There’s a shortage, and we’ll feel it too,“ said Nicole LeBeau, spokeswoman at Sweetbay, which pledged to keep mix prices where they are. But if inventory runs out, there will be empty shelves from time to time.

Publix secured a supply of canned pumpkin mix, “but it’s going to be tight” through Thanksgiving, said spokeswoman Shannon Patten. Already, three stores near downtown Tampa lacked pie mix Tuesday, though trucks should resupply later this week.

In Morton, outside Peoria in north central Illinois, Nestle-owned Libby’s grows pumpkins on about 5,000 acres – cultivating the gourd-like squash to be smaller, meatier, sweeter and “creamier” than pumpkins for carving into scary faces, Libby’s officials say.

Bad weather last year meant slim inventories going into the 2009 growing season. Then this year, too much rain soaked the crop again. The harvest started in September, runs 24 hours a day, and some shipments are going out, but in more limited quantities than years past.

Prices are up a bit too, with 15 oz. cans carrying a suggested retail price of $1.59 and 29 oz. cans $2.59. Libby’s spokeswoman Roz O’Hearn also blamed higher prices on the rising cost of steel used in cans.

For now, neither Publix nor Sweetbay will limit individual purchases of canned pumpkin pie mix but both companies say customers could see empty shelves.