After 36 years in the wedding cake business, David Mess said he’s honored to be the preferred vendor at the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory, the downtown Intercontinental Hotel, the University Club on Summit Avenue and other reception sites around St. Paul. What’s a lot less fun? Cracking the ceiling on the price of eggs.
Switching up fixed prices within negotiated contracts isn’t something that happens on the fly, so when the cost of bakery staples like eggs and chocolate goes up, as they both have in recent months, Mess more often than not simply eats the added expense, so to speak. Buffeted by the record high cost of eggs in particular, he finally raised his cake prices on Jan. 1.
“It’s kind of a bummer when you’re a baker,” said Mess, whose long-standing Buttercream Cakes and Desserts business is based on Transfer Road in St. Paul. “All those prices have been pre-determined, so the reception sites, they’re not going to do a surcharge on it.”
“We did do a price adjustment right after New Year’s, and that’s the only thing we can do,” he added. “For vendors like me, and restaurants that are heavy in the breakfast business, it’s kind of a tough one. If the client is spending $900 on a wedding cake, we’re not really in the business of raising the price beyond that. It’s not like ordering two eggs over easy and a side of sausage at a cafe.”
Egg-flation
If there were a word for whiplash related to egg prices, economists, retailers and perhaps most of all consumers would be using it — a lot. Whether or not you’ll find it in the dictionary, egg-flation is real — the national average price of a carton of a dozen large Grade A eggs reached an all-time high in January of $4.95, nearly double what it was a year ago at this time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For business-to-business wholesalers, prices rose to $7.74 per dozen for large, white shell eggs as of Feb. 14, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A whole new era has hatched for grocery shoppers, bakeries, restaurants and others feeling a bit egg-xploited by the rising cost of an American staple. Together with the skyrocketing cost of orange juice, coffee and chocolate — blame a citrus tree disease, hurricanes and other climate impacts — and breakfast is about to get a whole lot more expensive.
The problem?
At least 9% of the U.S. egg-laying flock has been lost to the H5N1 avian influenza virus since its mid-October surge alone, and a major supply state — California — has lost an estimated 90% of its in-state production. The avian flu recently spread into three states that account for as much as one-third of U.S. egg production — Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania — and spring waterfowl migrations are just around the corner, threatening to spread the virus to even more farms.
Some predict that egg shortages are likely to get worse before they get better.
“We’re going through one of the worst outbreaks in history, if not the worst outbreak in history,” said Brian Moscogiuri, a vice president with Eggs Unlimited in Irvine, Calif., one of the largest suppliers of eggs in the nation. “Since the middle of October, we lost more than 42 million egg-laying hens.”
No drop in demand
Despite the shortage, there’s been no drop in demand, which has fed into higher pricing. Eggs are what’s known as an “inelastic commodity,” meaning consumers may switch up brands but they’ll continue to buy them when prices surge. If anything, “concerns around shortages have created a little bit of panic buying,” Moscogiuri said.
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At Key’s Cafe and Bakery, co-owner Amy Hunn has responded by dropping key lime pie from her offerings at all nine Twin Cities locations for the time being, given that a batch of pies requires 60 egg yolks. She’s in the process of printing menus with adjusted food prices, and posting a sign in each site’s doorway explaining that each egg will now carry a 50 cent surcharge.
“Our food provider foresees this continuing for the next months, if not going into 2026,” Hunn said. “They do free printing for us and they said, ‘Adjust your prices.’ … It’s not something we want to do, but we have to make sure we’re not putting ourselves in the ground.”
Egg lovers are getting creative. A private company — RentTheChicken.com — offers to connect consumers across the country to suppliers that rent out laying hens and portable coops, with prices ranging from about $500 to $1,000 for a seven-month rental.
Some hoped a shift in the political winds would topple egg-flation, but the avian flu doesn’t care about who you voted for at the ballot. Egg prices have actually spiked rapidly since the November election, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts prices could continue to rise as much as 20% over the course of 2025.
“Your local independent grocers, they’re in the same spot consumers are,” said Minnesota Grocers Association President Patrick Garofalo. “No one is getting rich off this.”
Buying local
Still, some small grocery co-ops say they’ve been able to maintain fairly steady supply and stable pricing by buying local.
Matt Hass, general manager of the Hampden Park Co-op on Raymond Avenue in St. Paul, said the grocery gets its eggs directly from two Midwest sources — Larry Schultz Organic Farm in Owatonna, Minn., and a group called Wisconsin Growers, which is an Amish collective in western Wisconsin.
In addition, the store’s primary distributor supplies eggs from two national operations — the Farmers Hen House, which is cage-free, and Vital Farms, which goes a step further and advertises its eggs as certified humanely raised.
“The supply has impacted the national companies,” Hass said. “It’s a little bit spotty on whether we can get those eggs in on a week-to-week basis. We do get delivery of the local eggs in.”
Those local eggs have not been immune to the laws of supply and demand. About a month ago, Wisconsin Growers raised prices by about 30 cents per dozen eggs. As a result, the Hampden Co-op now sells their eggs for $4.99, instead of $4.49. So far, store management has been able to keep all egg prices below $5, even as some major grocers in the Twin Cities advertise packages for $7 or more.
The eggs that are purchased from a food service distributor and cooked as part of prepared foods at the deli counter are a different story entirely.
“We saw the case price of those just jump astronomically,” Hass said. “We’re just not buying them from our food service distributor anymore. We’re supplementing (the deli) with our local eggs. They’re basically wholesaling at $11 a dozen. I won’t name names.”
Here are a few more things to know about the egg outlook:
How are restaurants and retailers responding to the rising price of eggs?
Around the country, some grocers have taken to rationing their supply or simply maintaining empty shelves. Others use eggs as a loss leader, drawing in customers with lower-than-average prices so they’ll spend money on other goods. Trader Joe’s recently began advertising a carton of eggs for relatively rock-bottom prices, with a sign limiting sales to one carton per person per day. Bulk sellers like Costco and Sam’s Club have set their own limits. Still other retailers simply pass costs directly on to the consumer.
Waffle House, a diner chain with locations in Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and the deep South, has taken to adding a 50 cent-per-egg surcharge to its menu.
In downtown St. Paul, the Skyway Grill burger-and-breakfast counter in the Securian Building food court on Robert Street began advertising a 75 cent-per-egg surcharge on Feb. 13.
Why do egg prices vary so much from brand to brand, store to store and week to week?
The eggs you see on the store shelves are purchased by retailers through a variety of means, from contracts with particular farms or suppliers, to spot markets, where buyers and traders price for immediate delivery. That means the prices retailers pay for their supply will vary based on market conditions — supply and demand — but not every brand will be impacted the same way at the same time.
When it comes to determining what price and costs to pass on to you, the consumer, that’s a whole different animal.
“Each major retailer has different strategies around eggs,” Moscogiuri said. “Some of them may use them as a loss leader. Some of them have lagging price contracts, where they pass along costs more slowly. … There’s varying ways to price: against the market benchmarks, or against long-term moving averages, cost-plus deals, fixed formulas. A lot of that has been negotiated prior to what’s going on here recently.”
Where is the flu prevalent now?
After all but decimating California’s laying hens, the avian flu has found its way to some of the largest egg-supplying states in and around the Midwest, including Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In recent weeks, it’s spread rapidly to commercial layer farms, turkey farms, backyard farms, wild birds, and even in some states to cats and dairy herds, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, or CIDRAP, at the University of Minnesota.
Cattle can be quarantined for a couple of months and eventually recover, but avian influenza is quickly fatal to birds.
“We have a number of flyways that go up and down from the Arctic to the south, to the equator,” said veterinarian and epidemiologist Jeff Bender, director of the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center at the University of Minnesota. “We’ve actually seen it across all the flyways. … Through the work we’ve done, we’ve seen it in wild birds coming through in December in Minnesota. The Mississippi flyway, we had a number of reports of bird die-offs or sick birds, and they tested positive.”
Is this worse than the avian flu outbreak of 2015?
In a word: Yes.
“It absolutely is worse than 2015,” said Abby Schuft, program leader for Agricultural and Natural Resources at University of Minnesota Extension. “In 2015, our outbreak was from March to June, and then it was done in the entire United States. We lost 15.1 million birds. Since February 2022, the outbreak has not stopped in the United States. In total, the USDA reports 121 million domestic birds gone. That’s our chicken and our poultry.”
What preventative measures are farmers taking?
Strict hygiene protocols range from requiring workers to wash their hands and switch their boots more frequently, to isolating birds from areas where they might encounter wild waterfowl.
“There’s going to be a lot of parallels to what people experienced during COVID,” Schuft said. “It’s really difficult to control where wild birds fly, and where they land, but there are certain things we can do to control their lingering on a farm site.”
To scare away unwanted feathered visitors, some farmers have taken to using sound cannons. Minnesota turkey farms have begun experimenting with rotating laser lights.
“The birds see that as a predator, so then they won’t stay and linger for a long time,” Schuft said.
Those and other tactics fall under the general title of “biosecurity,” and commercial poultry represents the first industry to be required by the USDA to maintain biosecurity plans if farmers hope to qualify for indemnity payments.
“Other species may require a plan from the packing plant, but not from the USDA,” Schuft said. “Obviously, it’s not super successful, but without biosecurity we would have way more cases than we already do.”
What else are farmers doing?
When a farm is confirmed to have “highly pathogenic avian influenza,” the USDA requires that all of its birds must be disposed of and the premises emptied for a minimum of 120 days while environmental samples are taken from the floor, walls and equipment.
“Some farms have experienced multiple outbreaks,” Schuft said. “If a premises has a subsequent infection, it’s because there’s been a new introduction source, like waterfowl.”
After that, it can take months for a chick to mature into a growing hen and begin laying eggs, so repopulating lost laying stock is no fast endeavor.
That’s made the avian influenza an especially emotional and financially draining burden for farmers in particular.
“Some of our largest egg producers are in Ohio and Iowa, and they got hit pretty bad,” Bender said. “It takes time for those facilities to come back online. Usually, it’s about five months.”
“The physical, emotional, psychological toll is also quite dramatic, and that’s not just on the individual farmers,” Bender added. “It might be on the whole rural community and the feed industry. We’re talking billions of dollars lost now because of this continued outbreak.”
Does the avian flu present a danger to humans?
Avian flu is still rare, though not unheard of, in humans who likely contracted the virus through direct contact with animals — barn workers, bird hunters and others who encounter wild waterfowl. Experts say infected birds tend to die before they can lay eggs. For the extra cautious, thoroughly cooking eggs until they’re firm, not runny, would guarantee they’re free of pathogens like salmonella.
“Poultry products are still very safe to eat, ensuring poultry meat is cooked to 165 degrees, and that eggs are cooked, as well,” Schuft said.
Otherwise, “eggs are fine,” said Bender. “Probably the biggest risk for dairy farms impacted by influenza is for the workers.”
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