April 25 (Bloomberg) -- A group of shoppers came into Farmer Joe's Marketplace in Oakland one morning this week and bought all the 50-pound bags of rice. A few miles away at Berkeley Bowl Marketplace, long-grain rice is sold out.
``Our distributors can't get any,'' said Kirk Tamaki, 56, Berkeley Bowl's Asian food buyer. ``Short grain is all we have.''
A global rice shortage that has forced China and Vietnam to curb overseas sales of the food staple has reached the San Francisco Bay Area, home of one of the largest concentrations of Asian-Americans in the U.S. Stores, restaurants and food banks report dwindling supplies, and retail prices are rising.
Peter Seith, 43, Berkeley Bowl Marketplace's bulk foods manager, said he recently visited his girlfriend in the Philippines, the world's largest importer of rice last year. Prices there have doubled, he said.
``We haven't seen that here yet,'' he said. ``But we're anticipating it.''
The price of a 20-pound bag of short-grain rice at the store has increased to $15.15, up 76 percent from $8.59 last week, said customer service representative Culyon Garrison.
At the Chicago Board of Trade, rice has reached a record high 14 times this month, including yesterday, when futures for July delivery hit $25.07 per 100 pounds. They closed at $24.32.
To combat hoarding, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Sam's Club has limited purchases of jasmine, basmati and long-grain white rice to four bags a visit in all U.S. stores.
Buying Restrictions
A Costco Wholesale Corp. store in San Francisco this week limited rice purchases to five bags per customer. Later in the week, on April 23, the outlet reduced that number to two.
Lorette Mopannam, a shopper at the Costco store, asked a passing worker about the restriction.
``I never tried this rice, but I'm going to,'' she said, after not finding her normal brand among the dwindling bags in front of her.
Restaurant Depot, a wholesale company that supplies San Francisco restaurants, is limiting rice purchases to 10 bags a customer, said Thanh Pham, a manager at its San Jose location. ``Every single type of rice is gone right now,'' Pham said.
Mary Cheng, manager of the Pot Sticker restaurant, which serves Hunan, Szechwan and Mandarin fare in an alleyway in Chinatown and gets some of its rice from Restaurant Depot, lamented the shortage.
``Before, they had many kinds of rice,'' she said.
Social Unrest
The record prices of rice, wheat, corn and soybeans this year have spurred social unrest in Haiti, Egypt and other countries. The higher commodities prices are also pushing up U.S. food prices and spurring inflation. The consumer price index climbed 0.3 percent in March, after no change in the prior month, the Labor Department said April 16.
Nick Balzamit, manager of Baladie Gourmet Cafe, a Middle Eastern restaurant, also noticed the recent price increase.
``Yeah, what's the deal with that?'' he said. ``Jasmine rice, we checked for it at Sam's Club and Costco in Sacramento and they didn't have it.''
``I'd better go shopping,'' said Rita Abraldes, owner of Paladar, a Cuban café in San Francisco, which uses 40 to 50 pounds of rice a week.
Limits on rice purchases will be felt the most in California and Texas, which have large Asian and Mexican populations whose diets rely on rice, said food consultant Jim Degen, principal of J.M. Degen & Co. in Templeton, California.
About 32 percent of San Francisco's 744,000 people are of Asian ancestry, and 14 percent are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Charitable Groups
The shortage is affecting Bay Area charitable organizations, who say the number of people seeking meals has increased just as supplies are tightening. The San Francisco Food Bank will distribute some rice from recently received truckloads it agreed to purchase last year, though the price volatility means future stocks could decrease.
``Our pantry manager is very concerned,'' said Francis Aviani, spokeswoman for the St. Anthony Foundation, which serves about 2,600 free meals a day in the city's Tenderloin neighborhood. The shelter doles out about 3,000 pounds of rice a month.
``Rice is a significant portion of what we serve,'' Aviani said. ``We're covered until the truck is empty, and then we don't know.''