The price of eggs has nearly doubled for shoppers on the Central Coast.
“I’ve seen it with avocados and limes but I never even thought eggs would be this high in price," said Brenen Bonetti, Avila Market executive chef.
“Usually, when we get a case of eggs, we’ve been having to pay double the amount for it," said Jamie Bueno, House of Bagels store manager.
“When I saw that the prices were going up for eggs, I felt scared because you never know what else is going to go up," said Stacy Bersinar, Old West Cinnamon Rolls baker and cashier.
According to NBC News, we’re seeing this increase in price due to an avian influenza outbreak and an increase in the cost of production and shipping.
It’s not just restaurants feeling the effects of the shortage, customers are facing challenges as well.
Multiple grocery stores on the Central Coast are displaying signs saying they are limiting egg purchases to two cartons per customer.
“[The] price of eggs just, we’ve seen almost double in cost per case," Bonetti said.
A case of 150 eggs now costs more than $100.
“So we were looking at like $64 a case. Now we’re sitting around like $120,” Bonetti said.
Restaurants say they've absorbed the cost so far, but Boneti and Bersinar say the next step is changing menu prices.
"We’ve just sucked it up with the pricing because all of our products here are basically needing egg,” Bueno said.
“We haven’t changed menu prices yet. We’re probably going to have to do that soon,” Bersinar added.
“Especially with breakfast, something that is usually cheap and cost-effective that now we kind of have to work around to make it affordable,” Bonetti said.
