Some businesses crack amid egg shortage, soaring prices

George Ohanessian co-owns Heidi’s Restaurant, a breakfast joint in Waltham, Massachusetts. These days, he spends less time at the Grill than he’d like because he’s been busy “finding eggs,” he said. “They are expensive. They are difficult to find.

Ohanessian spent the morning traveling from one egg wholesaler to another. It was hit or miss.

“And when you get somewhere and they don’t have them, you’re like, ‘OK, where do I go next?’ It’s been very difficult, it’s been very difficult,” he said, adding that he pays almost three times as much for eggs as he did a few months ago.

He is not alone. A particularly contagious strain of bird flu continues to spread on farms nationwide. Tens of millions of chickens died as a result, causing the cost of eggs to skyrocket.

Last month, a dozen eggs at the grocery store cost more than $4 on average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about double the price a year ago. (A dozen eggs will get you even later in California.)

Because eggs are essential to Ohanessian’s business, price increases are especially difficult — and he can’t pass that on to his customers, he said. “It’s a family restaurant and we try to keep everything affordable so we can satisfy our customers. But I don’t, you know – I don’t know what to do sometimes.

There’s not much Ohanessian, because there just aren’t enough chickens currently munching eggs, according to Brian Mosgiuri, vice president at wholesalers Eggs Unlimited.

“A general rule of thumb is that we need about one bird for every person in the country right now. I think we have about 340 million people in the United States,” he said.

That’s compared to about 300 million hens laying eggs after recent flu outbreaks. That means “we’ve never seen prices this high before,” Mosgiuri said.

Mosgiuri sells eggs in retail stores, and he said a scarcity mindset among some shoppers can make things worse.

“I’m a consumer myself, right? And if I go to the store and I see big dozen of $2.99, limit two, I’ll probably get two dozen, versus a dozen,” he said. “And I think, you know, in some cases it creates more demand in some of these chains.”

And it’s unclear when more supply will come online. It takes time for egg producers to come forward after avian flu outbreak, by Emily Metz is CEO of the American Egg Board, a trade group for egg producers.

“We need to humanely euthanize these birds to prevent their suffering,” she said.

Then there is disinfection of the farm. State and federal approvals for this remediation. “And then we have to bring in new birds,” she said, “and those birds have to mature to the point where they start laying eggs – it’s a 6 to 9 month process, so unfortunately not a switch that can be flipped.

A recovery in egg supply can only occur through a prolonged period without new outbreaks of bird flu on farms, Metz added. This is something the industry is still waiting for.