May Anderson
NEW YORK (AP) – Small business owners relying on eggs for their products are facing sticker shock due to a lack of usually reliable staples.
Avian flu forces farmers to massacre millions of chickens a month, causing the prices of our eggs to skyrocket. The average price for a dozen grade A eggs in US cities reached $4.95 in January, with a previous record of $4.82 set two years ago and more than double the $2.04 recorded in August 2023 It has more than doubled. 20% this year.
Most owners see it as one of the many hurdles they constantly face and increase their walk. However, if the problem persists, you may be forced to raise prices or adjust the product.
Liz Berman is the sole owner and owner of sleepy Baker in Natic, Massachusetts. She specializes in custom crunch cakes, but also sells cupcakes, cookies, pies and other baked goods.
Eggs are just one of the baking ingredients that are experiencing price shocks. Items such as cocoa powder and butter have also been added. And price is not the only issue.
“It’s not just about the cost of eggs, right? And it’s just availability,” she said. She prefers to buy medium-sized white shelled eggs and to buy boxes with 18 dozen eggs, but since it was not available two weeks ago, she has given brown eggs in 12 individual cartons. I had to buy it.
“It sounds a bit ridiculous, but I’m the only one doing my job because I’m the only owner and I need to remove a huge amount of eggs from the walk-in. It’s just It’s a pain,” she said.
She doesn’t think the prices will be eased anytime soon. Cocoa powder prices have been rising for years.
“In the end I think I need to raise my price because that means there are categories of customers that I don’t order from me anymore,” she said.
In Princeton, New Jersey, owner of Bad Cookie Company, John Nachlinger, is charging a temporary 25 cents per cookie surfer to reduce additional costs.
“These increases are really hurting our revenues because cookies are already marginal food,” Natchlinger said. He said he doesn’t want to permanently raise prices or adjust the size of the cookies as he hopes the egg situation is temporary. “We want to bring value to our customers,” he said.
At Daisy’s, a pasta restaurant in Chicago, chef/partner Joe Frillman and chef/partner Lee Omilinski are not raising prices, but are considering adjusting menu items.
Omilinski said he was thinking about adding vegan and egg-free desert to his menu and has done more work with flax seeds. She said the shortage would make her more aware of the ingredients she is using and wasted.
“You know, if you need egg yolks, we’re absolutely saving those white people,” she said.
Meanwhile, Frillman said the restaurant has moved to making pasta with fewer eggs.
“We just changed the shape of the noodles,” he said. “We use extruders, which are basically devices that can push pasta without eggs.”
Menu items can also be adjusted depending on how long the egg shortage lasts, he said.
“Our menu has Pappardelle, which has been on since day one,” he said. “If this is just too expensive, then when the egg yolks get very heavy, you’ll move on to something like spaghetti or fettchin, which are similar noodles that can be made without eggs.”
Meanwhile, Stephanie Maynard, co-owner of Oxhollow Farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, faces another problem: a surge in demand.
The farm she owns with her husband produces beef, pork, chicken, eggs and vegetables. They have 950 spawning hens and another 300 will come in March. Winter is generally quiet as winter prepares for busy spring and summer months. However, this year they are rushing to increase egg production for green market customers.
People who may buy regular eggs at supermarkets are turning to the green market due to a shortage, and regular customers are increasing their orders just to secure eggs, she said .
“We’ve built relationships with our customers. I know a lot of them by their names and faces,” she said. “And now you’re looking at people who have never been in the market before. So I’m portraying a lot of new customers to get eggs in the market.”
Original issue: February 18th, 2025, 12:39pm EST
