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ERIE, Pa. (Erie News Now) — While inflation has affected nearly everything on store shelves, one of the most impacted products has been the average carton of a dozen eggs.
According to food market data company, Urner Barry, the average price of a dozen eggs is now $4.33, up from $1.33 just a year ago.
The high costs largely come from a wave of the avian flu earlier this year, causing more than 43 million egg-laying chickens nationwide to be euthanized. This, on top of skyrocketing feed, transportation, and labor costs, have caused the rise in egg price.
Local bakeries are suffering from the rising costs.
“The problem for me is on retail, I can raise my price, but on the baked goods, I can’t,” said Gordon Evans, owner and manager of Art’s Bakery. “So I’m in the middle of Christmas, [and] the egg price keeps going up. I can’t change my retail prices on my products. When you’re going through 100 dozen eggs a week and the price just went up $3 a dozen, that’s a lot of money.”
The costs are impacting local grocery stores and customers too.
“The customers are now paying, $5.99, a dozen,” said Dan Serafin, owner of Serafin’s Food Market. “The cost of the eggs coming in here is, over $5 a dozen. So you try to work on a little bit of a margin. But it affects everybody.”
Egg prices have started to come back down, but it may be a while before we see a dozen eggs selling for less than $2 again.
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