Fluctuating egg prices aren’t anything new for Scott Auslander, general manager of Bread Furst, a bakery in Washington, DC. But this time is different, he told CNN.
“Our suppliers are telling us that they don’t know when egg prices are going to come down — or if they’re going to come down,” Auslander said. “Eggs are outrageous.”
Bread Furst uses about 150 eggs a day and is now paying more than double what the bakery used to pay a year ago, Auslander said. Last week, the bakery raised prices for all of its egg-heavy pastries and dishes, which is about a third of the menu. That includes its signature “messy egg sandwich,” which now costs a dollar more.
Egg prices are surging nationwide after the ongoing bird flu outbreak led to the culling of tens of millions of chickens last year. That’s forcing many of America’s bakeries to consider raising prices, if they haven’t already done so, while they attempt to figure out how to manage the country’s egg crisis.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, or bird flu, infected flocks across the country last year, resulting in the deaths of more than 40 million egg-laying birds, according to the US Department of Agriculture. That’s driving today’s egg shortage, which has caused prices to soar.
Wholesale fresh egg prices were 186% higher in January compared to the same month a year earlier, according to government data. That was the fourth-biggest annual increase on records going back to 1992.