How Egg Prices Are Affecting the Restaurant Industry

Walk into supermarkets, corner groceries, and convenience stores across America, and you’ll see evidence of the “Great Egg Crisis.” A shortage of the staple commodity due to the bird flu has caused prices to skyrocket and forced purveyors to place limits on the number of egg cartons that shoppers can buy.

The ripple effect of the crisis is becoming increasingly visible, as chain restaurants and independent establishments are forced to make difficult decisions regarding their menus. Bakeries are especially pressed, and are deciding which items they can afford to keep in rotation. Some have had to change their egg sources entirely because prices are simply out of reach. 

But while home cooks can take steps like swapping in substitutes for eggs, businesses often find that more difficult, given that customers are used to the taste and appearance of their beloved dishes. 

“We are an artisan bakery using traditional recipes and focused on real ingredients, so we're not interested in reformulating our recipes to use egg replacers or other alternative ingredients,” says Amy Emberling, a managing partner at Zingerman’s Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which has an extensive lineup of bread, pastries, cakes, and desserts. 

Even if the bakery wanted to adapt recipes, doing so is “a massive undertaking considering the number of different items we actually make,” she tells Food & Wine.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average carton of a dozen large Grade-A eggs cost $5.90 in February 2025, compared with about $3.00 in February of 2024. That’s a price increase of almost 100% over the course of just one year, and in the past month alone the price of eggs has jumped by 19%.

On February 26, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that egg prices could climb more than 40% this year — as opposed to its previous prediction that they would only rise by 20% in 2025 — which means we’re likely not done with the cost increases yet.

Along with the difficulty this presents for home cooks, who rely on eggs as an affordable source of protein, the price increases also affect wholesale retailers, which is bad news for food businesses. 

New Orleans-based Levee Baking Company tells Food & Wine that eggs were recently $145 per case (which typically contains 15 dozen) at its local branch of Restaurant Depot, a national restaurant supply company that many establishments use to source bulk ingredients. Levee usually buys from local purveyors, which are currently charging $90 a case, but sometimes needs to supplement its supply with eggs from Restaurant Depot. Over the years, Levee says egg costs per case have ranged from $25 to $75, but never climbed above that until recently, making a price tag of $145 seem unbelievable. 

Emberling, whose bakery buys an average of 1,500 dozen (or 180,000) eggs a week, said she noticed prices starting to go up last spring. Her instinct was to wait before raising costs for customers, because other commodity prices often fluctuate too. In fact, price decreases in ingredients such as flour offset the increase in eggs, allowing Zingerman's to hold prices steady throughout the fall while still maintaining its profits. 

However, Emberling says that “In the last two months the price [of eggs] has gone up aggressively and now we're paying 50% more than in the fall with no end in sight.”

Traffic in restaurants is declining

Responses by major restaurant chains have been the most visible to diners. In mid-February, Waffle House, which serves about 272 million eggs each year, added a surcharge of 50 cents per egg to customer orders. Later in the month, Denny’s announced it was introducing a temporary surcharge — which will differ in amount depending on location — to dishes that include eggs at some of its 1,500 restaurants across the country. 

“We understand our guests’ desire for value, and we will continue to look for ways to provide options on our menu, including our $2 $4 $6 $8 value menu, while navigating these rapidly changing market dynamics responsibly,” Denny’s said in a statement. 

Although a 50-cent surcharge might not seem like a big deal, the egg crisis and its impacts are affecting customer visits, which have fallen sharply at some chains in recent weeks, according to data compiled for Food & Wine by Placer.ai, a location analytics software platform that tracks retail and restaurant trends.

Since mid-January this year, visits per restaurant have fallen weekly at Waffle House, Denny’s, and Broken Yolk Cafe (another breakfast-focused chain), the platform’s data shows. “Price-sensitive consumers seem to be reacting negatively to egg price surcharges,” explains R. J. Hottovy, Placer.ai’s head of analytical research.

Independent establishments are feeling the impact too

Customer reluctance to pay extra for dishes that include eggs might spell even more trouble for independent restaurants. In Santa Rosa, California, Mac’s Deli and Cafe has added a $2 surcharge per egg dish. Why the large increase? The restaurant is currently paying $142 for a case of 180 eggs, which is up 373% from its usual cost of just $30 per case, according to the Press-Democrat. 

Other restaurants are starting to remove egg dishes entirely, or replace them with egg-free ones. Comfort food and chicken wing restaurant Side Biscuit in Ann Arbor recently took its Kaeser Salad — a riff on a Caesar salad — off the menu, because eggs had become too expensive. Instead it’s now selling a spicy miso-cucumber salad, which does not contain eggs. 

At Zingerman’s Bakehouse, you’ll notice that angel food cake, which depends heavily on egg whites for its light and airy texture, will be missing from the spring menu. Emberling says it will be discontinuing its egg salad sandwich and increasing the price of its breakfast egg sandwich too. For wholesale customers, the business is raising prices by 2% across the board, with the promise that if egg prices return to normal in the fall, it will reduce prices by 1%. 

“We don't relish increasing prices and are sensitive to the price increase fatigue our customers are already feeling,” Emberling notes. 

She’s also concerned about deflating consumer confidence, and knows how these costs must impact the community. “We'd prefer not to contribute to these feelings in our small ecosystem by also increasing prices. We are balancing this desire with the desire to provide raises to our staff who are feeling the economic crunch and to keep our business sustainable.” 

It’s not just bakeries and breakfast spots that bear the brunt of the cost

While bakeries and breakfast spots are the first places that come to mind when you think of eggs, other businesses are hurting too. Sweet Republic, a group of specialty ice cream shops in the Phoenix, Arizona area, recently raised the price of its waffle cone and waffle bowls by 25 cents to $1.75. “That’s probably one of our biggest uses of eggs,” co-owner Helen Yung tells Food & Wine. 

To further offset higher egg prices, Yung says Sweet Republic has reduced the number of flavors that use a custard base made with eggs. It used to have three to four, but now it has only one.

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, family-owned Pine River Dairy was forced to raise prices from its famously low 25 cents a scoop to 50 cents a scoop, the first increase since it began selling ice cream in 1978, according to WFRV-TV. 

Beyond the manipulation of prices and menus, if the egg crisis continues to worsen, economists emphasize that the next step for restaurants and other food businesses could be to cut staff, and there’s evidence that job shrinkage is already underway. In January, the restaurant industry lost 15,700 jobs, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusted its employment numbers to reveal that about 100,000 fewer people work in food businesses than it previously thought.

Eggs are a simple commodity that we’ve taken for granted, and even a small price increase in a good so ubiquitous can have drastic consequences. We’ve already started to see how egg prices impact grocery shoppers, and now restaurants are forced to respond to the crisis too.