Coleslaw anyone? P.E.I. farmer left with mountain of cabbage due to slow sales

An Island farmer with 544,000 kilograms of cabbage in storage is hoping people get a sudden hankering for coleslaw.

Tania MacKenzie of MacKenzie Produce said March is usually a time when business starts picking up, but this year is different because of the weather and COVID-19.

"We've never seen this happen before," she said.

"We supply cabbage to the coleslaw market and if the weather is nice outside people would be going and grabbing that cup of coleslaw from the grocery store. It's not just the weather though, it's COVID. Not everybody is reaching for coleslaw."

MacKenzie said last year's crop, which also had challenges because of poor weather and a labour shortage, should last in their coolers until September. They have decided not to plant any early cabbage this yearand focus instead on growing carrots, pumpkins and other vegetables.

Employee laid off

They have already had to lay off one employee because of poor cabbage sales, but they hope business will pick up when more COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

"We could see it happening, we just did not know how bad it was going to be," she said.

"We'll slowly get back into normalcy and hopefully start to see more cabbage sell. It's not just selling the cabbage itself just to the grocery store or a Chinese food restaurant. It's the wholesale part of our cabbage ... 25,000 pounds a week of cabbage is what was normally going out the door."

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