To find affordable eggs for her bakery in Miami, Michele Cruz has gone from buying them at the grocery store and playing “musical vendors,” to bartering cookies and cinnamon rolls for eggs with another small business owner amid the national egg shortage.
“Everything I use at the bakery is eggs. If you have breakfast, eggs; brownies, eggs; pastelitos, eggs; muffins, eggs,” Cruz, who owns Doña Posada at The Citadel, a food hall that offers artisanal meals in Little River, told WLRN.
The main reason egg prices have increased to a record national average of $4.95 a dozen this month is that more than 66 million birds have been slaughtered to limit the spread of bird flu that has overwhelmed flocks around the country.
READ MORE: USDA unveils a $1 billion plan to address the egg crisis
Cruz said she goes through 40 dozen eggs a week, which now costs her about $330. That means she is spending more than $1,000 per month on eggs. Back in November, she was paying about $500 a month for the ingredient.
“Not only does that affect my small business, that affects my production levels, my sales … every single aspect of my business right now, which is very unfortunate,” she said.
This week she started implementing a $0.25 surcharge for any items that contain the ingredient on the menu, which was something she had been hesitant to do for the past few months, out of fear that she would lose customers.
Michael Lederman owns and runs Joanna’s Marketplace, a small family business in Miami. For their in-house bakery, Lederman buys 150 dozen eggs weekly. Each dozen ranges from $8.50 to $10, which he said, is three to four times what he was paying just a few months ago.
“Most customers... must understand when we have to raise our prices. The big question is: How much more prices can go up before we start losing customers?”Michael Lederman
Like Cruz, Lederman has also had to increase prices to many of the marketplace’s baked goods such as cakes, cookies, breakfast pastries and more products that contain the ingredient.
“Most customers are seeing their food prices rise at the supermarkets as well as at restaurants everywhere so [they] must understand when we have to raise our prices.,” he said. “The big question is: How much more prices can go up before we start losing customers?”
The United States Department of Agriculture predicts the current price of eggs could soar to more than 40% in 2025. Additionally, the department announced it will invest $1 billion to address the egg crisis, which is on top of the $2 billion it has already spent since the outbreak began in 2022.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
