$ 70,000 more per year for eggs: how price increases harm small businesses

Over the past 130 years, four generations of the family of Ernest Lepore have cooked pastries – Puffs, Cannoli, Sfogliatelle – who came to define the small district of Manhattan, wars with economic slowdowns and drastic changes in the neighborhood that his family calls the house.

But with the arrow cost of the eggs – a basic ingredient in almost half of their products – it becomes more and more difficult for the Bakery Ferra will avoid increasing their prices.

“We cannot continue to transmit costs to our guests,” said Ferrara president Ernest Lepore to ABC News. “While you get closer to Easter, the eggs are increasing exponentially. I can’t do anything about it.”

Egg prices have skyrocketed in the past year, reaching historical heights, and wholesale buyers like small businesses paid more than $ 8 for a dozen eggs last week. According to the Last USDA reportPublished Friday, the national medium wholesale price has dropped slightly at $ 6.85 per dozen.

However, many grocery stores sell their eggs to lose to bring customers into the door, which has brought the average retail price of a dozen eggs to just under $ 5. According to the Labor statistics officeThe average price of a dozen eggs at the grocery store reached a record summit of $ 4.95 in January 2025. More, the USDA predicted These prices could increase by 40% this year, and experts warn that these prices could remain high, even if the supply of eggs in the United States rebounds.

But small businesses, unlike grocery buyers, are linked to the wholesale price of the market, which makes these costs increasingly devastating.

Theodore Karounos, owner of Square Diner in the district of downtown New York, said that this is reflected in tens of thousands of dollars in additional annual costs for him.

“If things are due to this price and we remain as busy as we were last year, I will pay $ 70,000 more for eggs than last year,” he told ABC News. “I can’t just absorb this time for the next nine months.”

Exorbitant costs are the result of a national shock to be provided, caused by a devastating epidemic of the avian flu. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 166 million commercial poultry birds have been affected since 2022, when the epidemic began. But the last months have been particularly devastating.

“In just four months, we have lost 52 million layers and chickens in the egg supply of our country, which is very different from any other epidemic that we have seen in the past.” Karyn Rispoli, editor -in -chief of Expana, a company that examines and follows the price of eggs, told ABC News. “The biggest difference recently is simply that it has been dietary and has really devastated the supply of eggs to our nation.”

The avian flu has wreaked havoc on herds of poultry across the country. Consequently, Rispoli says that the supply of egg eggs in the country is almost ten years old. Once a chicken is infected, farmers are forced to reduce the rest, after which comes the challenge of repopulating their herds.

But even if the United States faces an egg shortage, the demand for goods remains relatively constant, creating a perfect storm for egg prices. Therefore, small businesses based on eggs, such as the Ferrara and Square Diner bakery, are forced to make difficult decisions.

Unlike large restaurant channels like Denny’s and Waffle House, which have adapted to the costs of the increase in increase by adding an supplement to egg prices at their menu prices, small businesses are less inclined to follow suit, according to the Dartmouth College economy teacher, Bruce Sacerdote.

“In the case of a restaurant, they are not necessarily able to transmit the increase in total price. We are not talking about a simple goods where the markets are released immediately and you just have to pass the increase in full price,” he told ABC News. “Restaurants can take a blow to their margins so as not to transmit the full price increase.”

At the Tom’s restaurant on the Upper West Side in New York – famous as the Fictional Monk’s Café decor in the television series “Seinfeld” – the arrow cost of the eggs means that the co -owner John Ieromonahos spent an additional $ 2,000 to pay the eggs to continue to provide the restaurant, where about 70% of their business is a breakfast.

“Of course, we do not want to charge customer supplement,” said Ieromonahos. “This is not our client’s fault, but I don’t know how long we will last without invoice more.”

At the Hungarian Pastry of Manhattan, the owner Philip Binii told ABC News that he was doing his best so as not to transmit the higher cost of eggs to consumers, although he too does not know how long he can absorb the increasingly prohibitive cost.

“It’s frustrating. I wouldn’t want to increase our prices. I think we have fair prices and that I would like to be able to keep them stable,” he said. “I’m just waiting for how bad it becomes before making a decision on how I’m going to change the prices. It’s tight.”

While consumers, small businesses and their customers continue to pay more for eggs in the middle of the avian flu epidemic, the largest producer and egg distributor in the country has reported a flambé of profits.

Cal-Maine Foods, according to Dry depositssaw an increase of more than three times of their raw profits during their 2023 fiscal year, at the dawn of the bird flu epidemic. And according to their most recent depositTheir raw profits increased by 342% in the second quarter of their 2025 financial year compared to the previous year.

Rispoli also told ABC News that grocery buyers could see increased prices even when egg supply begins to recover, because grocery stores can seek to recover the lost benefits. She said it happened when the prices of the eggs skyrocketed at the start of the current avian flu epidemic.

“The next day, as the market corrected and lowered considerably, the retailers then held the prices of higher shelves to try to resume part of the margin they had previously lost,” she said.

Back in Ferrara in little Italy, Lepore is looking everywhere to find other ways to save money so that he does not have to increase their prices. It recently improved the building’s cooling system and improved its refrigerators, saving money in long -term electricity. He also takes a lesson from his grandparents, who kept the company to cross the Great Depression, making lots of smaller goods in order to keep the product fresh more easily and avoid waste.

“Eggs determine production,” he said. “While we are going to Easter, I’m going to cook at the last minute so as not to waste an egg, because there cannot be an end.”