This piece by Martha C. White was published by the New York Times as part of its "Making It Work" series on March 26, 2025. Oh My Cupcakes! founder and CEO Melissa Johnson provides perspective from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This post includes Melissa's contribution, but we encourage you to click the link above to read the full article.

Shell Shocked: How Small Eateries Are Dealing With Record Egg Prices

Mom-and-pop businesses are trying to adapt to the soaring cost of eggs. The owners of four egg-centric restaurants across the country show how they are coping with this threat to their livelihoods.

Bird flu outbreaks that wiped out about 15 percent of the nation’s egg-laying chickens and drove wholesale egg prices to a peak of more than $8.50 a dozen in February have vexed grocery shoppers and prompted big breakfast chains to add surcharges to diners’ checks. But for owners of small eateries, paying double or triple for an ingredient they crack by the hundreds each day could potentially put them out of business.

These business owners are getting creative: changing recipes; using liquid or powdered eggs, which haven’t gotten as expensive as quickly; and selling whatever items they can that don’t include eggs — things like falafel or packaged snacks or even fresh flowers.

Prices have come down in recent weeks but remain historically high, and worry about new outbreaks is keeping business owners on edge. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted on Tuesday that egg prices would climb nearly 58 percent this year. Food trends like all-day breakfast menus and protein-heavy diets are keeping demand — and therefore prices — high, according to analysts at CoBank, a bank that lends to farmers.

Eggs are too perishable to be stockpiled and small businesses generally don’t have extra cash for refrigerator space to keep extra eggs even for brief periods, said Rob Handfield, a professor and the director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative at North Carolina State University.

“It’s not like you can stock up on a month’s worth of eggs,” he said. “You really rely on those weekly or daily deliveries of eggs if you’re a small business.”

Restaurant and bakery owners could charge more for their baked goods or breakfast sandwiches, but they fear that hiking prices will drive away customers.

“That’s the big challenge for a lot of owners right now,” said Holly Wade, executive director of the NFIB Research Center at the National Federation of Independent Business.

“The more items we can come up with that don’t include eggs but still supplement our income, the better off we’ll be,” she said. She has added bags of snack mix and dry pancake batter mix to the shelves, along with gift items like candles and fresh flowers.

Ms. Johnson considered adding a surcharge to offset some of the increase in egg costs. But she worried that even an increase as low as 25 cents would dissuade customers, who are already spending less now than they did in previous years.

“We could easily price ourselves out of the market,” she said. “Cupcakes are not a necessity. We understand people are really needing to make some decisions with how they’re spending their hard-earned money.”