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It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles, and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem.
Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch, and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Eggs Up Grill has 90 restaurants in nine southern states, up from 26 in 2018. Florida-based Another Broken Egg Café celebrated its 100th restaurant last year.
Fast-food chains are also adding more breakfast items. Starbucks, which launched egg bites in 2017, now has a breakfast menu with 12 separate items containing eggs. Wendy’s reintroduced breakfast in 2020 and offers 10 items with eggs.
Reviews website Yelp said 6,421 breakfast and brunch businesses opened in the United States last year, 23% more than in 2019.
In normal times, producers could meet the demand for all those eggs. But an ongoing bird flu outbreak, which so far has forced farms to slaughter nearly 159 million chickens, turkeys and other birds — including nearly 47 million since the start of December — is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. In January, the average price of eggs in the U.S. hit a record $4.95 per dozen.
The percentage of eggs that go to U.S. restaurants versus other places, like grocery stores or food manufacturers, is not publicly available. U.S. Foods, a restaurant supplier, and Cal-Maine Foods, the largest U.S. producer of shell eggs, did not respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment.
But demand from restaurants is almost certainly growing. Foot traffic at U.S. restaurants has grown the most since 2019 for morning meals, 2019, according to market research firm Circana. Pre-lunchtime hours accounted for 21% of total restaurant visits in 2024.
Breakfast sandwiches are the most popular order during morning visits, Circana said, and 70% of the breakfast sandwiches on U.S. menus include eggs.
Eggs Up Grill CEO Ricky Richardson said breakfast restaurants took off after the COVID pandemic because people longed for comfort and connection. As inflation made food more expensive, customers saw breakfast and lunch as more affordable options for eating out, he said.
The growth in restaurant demand reverses a pattern that emerged during the pandemic, when consumers tried to stock up on eggs for home use but restaurants needed fewer of them because many of them had to close for a time, according to Brian Earnest, a lead economist for animal proteins at CoBank.
U.S. egg consumption declined for more than five decades before reaching a low of 247 per person in 2008, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As nutritional research and marketing established eggs as an inexpensive protein source instead of heart-clogging cholesterol bombs, per capita consumption of egg products grew to the equivalent of 292 fresh eggs in 2019, the data shows.
“Consumers think eggs are really fresh, so if you’re making something with eggs, you know it’s fresh,” Earnest said.
Before the pandemic reduced demand and bird flu outbreaks impacted supplies, the USDA had forecast that Americans would continue eating more eggs. By 2023, the most recent year for which annual data is available, they were down to 249 eggs per person.
Other trends have impacted the economics of eggs. To address animal rights concerns, McDonald’s and some other companies have switched to 100% cage-free eggs, which limits the sources they will buy from. Ten states, including California and Colorado, have passed laws restricting egg sales to products from cage-free environments.
“It makes the market much more complicated than it was 20 years ago,” Earnest said.
The higher prices are hitting restaurants hard. Wholesale egg prices hit a national average of $7.34 per dozen last week, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That was 51% higher than at the beginning of the year. Wholesale costs may be higher than retail prices since grocers use eggs as a loss leader to get customers in the door.
Some chains, like Waffle House, have added a surcharge to help offset the cost of eggs. Others may turn to egg substitutes like tapioca starch for some recipes or cut egg dishes from the menu, said Phil Kafarakis, the president and CEO of the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association.
First Watch President and CEO Chris Tomasso said eggs are critical for the chain’s brand and are found in the majority of its offerings, whether at the center of the plate or as an ingredient in batters. So far, he said, the company has been able to obtain the eggs it needs and isn’t charging extra for them.
First Watch is also increasing portion sizes for non-egg items like meat and potatoes, Tomasso said.
Richardson, of Eggs Up Grill, said he recently met with franchisees to discuss adding a surcharge but they decided against it.
“Eggs have always been and will continue to be an important part of American diets,” Richardson said.
While there are few things that Americans from both sides of the political spectrum can agree on these days, the likely effect that tariffs will have on prices in the country is one of those things. According to a recent survey conducted by YouGov and The Economist, 70 percent of Americans, including 87 of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans, believe that tariffs on foreign goods generally increase prices. Three percent of respondents think that tariffs have an impact on prices, while just two percent of the 1,600 Americans surveyed think that they will actually lower prices.
While Americans have gotten used to sticker shock over the past couple of years as prices for food, gas, and other everyday items surged, many shoppers had to look twice when they bought a couple of eggs lately. The average price for a dozen Grade A large eggs climbed to $4.95 last month according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from just $2.52 twelve months earlier. According to the latest CPI report, overall egg prices rose by more than 50 percent over the past year.
So what’s behind the “inflation” crisis that has even caused restaurants like Waffle House to add a $0.50 surcharge for every egg that customers want in their omelet? While overall food price inflation moderated in 2024, egg prices have been driven skywards by several outbreaks of bird flu, which have severely disrupted egg supply in recent months. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. farmers were forced to kill 21 million egg-laying hens due to HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) in the first weeks of 2025 alone, adding to more than 13 million hens "depopulated" in December 2024. "The timing and scope of HPAI outbreaks have created an imbalance in the nation’s supply of table shell eggs with supplies short in some regions while barely adequate in others, the USDA said last week. Because eggs are hard to substitute, even modest declines in supply have a large impact on prices, resulting in the latest surge.
As our chart shows, egg prices are up more than 200 percent over the past four years, and avian flu outbreaks cause prices to spike in 2022 and 2024. Other food staples have also seen significant price increases over the past four years, with coffee, sugar, and beef among the products most affected by the inflation crisis. Tomatoes, bananas,s and cheese are among the few examples that haven't been impacted as much by inflation, as our chart nicely illustrates.