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"Consumers, first of all, eat with their eyes," said Shirish Mehta, chief food innovations and technology officer for Dallas-based Pizza Hut Inc. "But you may not harvest it."īob Hale of Hermiston, Ore., switched from yellow to red onions some years ago, anticipating a shift in demand.Of the overall onion market nationwide in 2004, 88 percent were yellow onions, 7 percent were reds, up from 5 percent five years before, and 5 percent were white, according to the National Onion Association.įast-food chains are discovering what gourmet chefs have long known: A dish's visual presentation is almost as important as its taste. "You can put a red in the ground," warned Hale, whose red onions are used in Subway's 20,000 North American franchises. sales manager for Nunhems USA, the largest onion seed supplier in America. And producing a good variety takes an average of about 10 years, said Ton van der Velden, U.S. But the real pretty - the red wing, salsa, red bull seeds - those are hard to find," he said.īecause the yellow onion has been by far the most popular variety for decades, seed breeders focused most of their attention on yellow. You can get the ugly, the not-so-pretty reds. When he is not out working his fields, he is on the phone looking for a good red seed. In the last two years, he has doubled his area of reds from 30 acres to about 60 acres, hoping to meet the recent demand from grocery chains. The red onion's sudden popularity caught the farming industry off guard, with many farmers forced to scrounge for seeds.ĭan Miyasako, 44, inherited his father's farm in Homedale, Idaho, where the elder Miyasako had been growing yellows since the 1940s. Domino's Pizza is sticking with yellow after testing red onions and finding it was harder to assure quality and consistency. Not all major chains have jumped on the red bandwagon. Last year, Burger King began using red onions in salads, though it is staying with yellow on their Whoppers. Sager, who owns a franchise in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the two were tested side by side. "Red was outpacing yellow to the point where there was no point in having the yellow anymore," said Steven R. In spite of the higher price, the switch was a "no brainer," said Subway's Nick Hauptfeld, manager of new product development.Īfter tests in selected stores, Subway researchers concluded that their customers chose red onions over yellow 3 to 1, he said. The same held for Subway, which changed to reds in 2003. The decision to switch was a "significant investment" for the chain because red onions cost more than the yellow, he said. Overwhelmingly, their subjects chose the more colorful pizza, even though the two onions differ in taste, with the red generally thought to be milder. So they did a test, putting two pizzas in front of customers - identical except that one was topped with red onions, the other with yellow. "Cheese is light in color, and so a white or yellow onion doesn't show up," Mehta said. In the company's pizza lab, researchers were bothered by the fact that the yellow onion blended with the cheese.
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Of the onion market nationwide in 2004, 88 percent was yellow, 7 percent was red, up from 5 percent five years before, and 5 percent was white, according to the National Onion Association.įast-food chains are discovering what chefs have long known - visual presentation is almost as important as taste. Now, large and small chains are experimenting with the brightly pigmented onion, a highly temperamental plant that takes far more skill to grow than its yellow cousin.
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Two years ago, Subway, the nation's largest-selling sandwich chain, embraced reds, saying they added a splash of color to subs. He was ignored by the others farmers here at the heart of the nation's onion belt.īut Hale was proved right in 1997, when Pizza Hut switched from yellow to red onions on all its pizzas. Bob Hale took a risk a decade ago, pulling up his yellow onions and planting red ones instead.