For the final 130 years, 4 generations of Ernest Lepore’s household have baked the pastries – cream puffs, cannoli, sfogliatelle – which have come to outline Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood, withstanding wars, financial downturns and drastic modifications to the neighborhood that his household calls residence.
However with the hovering price of eggs – a staple ingredient in almost half their merchandise – it is turning into more and more troublesome for Ferrara Bakery to keep away from elevating their costs.
“We will not hold passing on prices to our visitors,” Ferrara’s president, Ernest Lepore, instructed ABC Information. “As you progress nearer to Easter, eggs are simply rising exponentially in value. I can not do something about it.”
Egg costs have skyrocketed during the last 12 months, reaching historic highs, and wholesale consumers like small companies had been paying over $8 for a dozen eggs final week. In response to the latest USDA report, launched Friday, the nationwide common wholesale value has dropped barely to $6.85 per dozen.
An worker packages eggs at Aytekin rooster farm on Feb. 28, 2025, in Bandirma, Turkey.
Chris McGrath/Getty Photographs
Nonetheless, many grocery shops promote their eggs at a loss to get prospects within the door, bringing the typical retail value of a dozen eggs to only over $5. In response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical value of a dozen eggs on the grocery retailer reached a report excessive of $4.95 in January 2025. Extra, the USDA predicted that costs may enhance 40 % this 12 months, and consultants are warning that these costs may keep excessive even when the availability of eggs within the U.S. rebounds.
However small companies, in contrast to grocery consumers, are tied to the market wholesale value, making these surging prices significantly devastating.
Theodore Karounos, proprietor of Sq. Diner in New York’s downtown neighborhood of Tribeca, mentioned that interprets into tens of hundreds of {dollars} in extra yearly prices for him.
“If issues maintain up at this value, and we keep as busy as we had been final 12 months, I am going to pay $70,000 extra for eggs than I did final 12 months,” he instructed ABC Information. “I can not simply soak up that hit for the subsequent 9 months.”
Theodore Karounos has been the proprietor of Sq. Diner, in New York Metropolis’s Tribeca neighborhood, since 2001. The enterprise has been in his household since 1970.
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The exorbitant prices are a results of a nationwide shock to produce, led to by a ravaging outbreak of the avian flu. The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention reports that over 166 million industrial poultry birds have been affected since 2022, when the outbreak started. However the previous few months have been particularly devastating.
“In simply 4 months, we have misplaced 52 million layers and pullets inside our nation’s egg provide, which is vastly completely different than every other outbreak that we have seen up to now.” Karyn Rispoli, managing editor of Expana, a agency that surveys and tracks the value of eggs, instructed ABC Information. “The largest distinction of late is simply that it has been extra deadly and actually devastated our nation’s egg provide.”
The avian flu has wreaked havoc on poultry flocks throughout the nation. Consequently, Rispoli says that the nation’s provide of egg-laying hens is at almost a ten-year low. As soon as one rooster is contaminated, farmers are compelled to cull the rest, after which comes the problem of repopulating their flocks.
Chickens feed from their cages at Aytekin rooster farm on Feb. 28, 2025, in Bandirma, Turkey.
Chris McGrath/Getty Photographs
However even because the U.S. faces an egg scarcity, demand for the commodity stays comparatively fixed, creating an ideal storm for egg costs to soar. Consequently, these small companies that depend on eggs, like Ferrara Bakery and Sq. Diner, are compelled to make troublesome selections.
Not like bigger restaurant chains like Denny’s and Waffle Home, which have adjusted to the surging prices by including an egg surcharge to their menu merchandise costs, smaller companies are much less inclined to comply with swimsuit, in line with Dartmouth Faculty economics professor Bruce Sacerdote.
“Within the case of a restaurant, they don’t seem to be essentially in a position to move on the complete value enhance. We’re not speaking a few easy commodity the place the markets clear instantly and also you simply must move on the complete value enhance,” he instructed ABC Information. “Eating places could also be taking successful to their margins to be able to not move on the complete value enhance.”
John Ieromonahos is the co-owner of Tom’s Restaurant on New York Metropolis’s Higher West Aspect, well-known for serving because the fictional location for Monk’s Café from the TV collection “Seinfeld.”
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At Tom’s Restaurant on New York Metropolis’s Higher West Aspect – well-known because the setting for the fictional Monk’s Café within the TV collection “Seinfeld” – the hovering price of eggs signifies that co-owner John Ieromonahos is spending an extra $2,000 every week to pay for eggs to proceed supplying the restaurant, the place roughly 70 % of their enterprise is breakfast.
“In fact, we do not need to cost further to prospects,” Ieromonahos mentioned. “This isn’t our buyer’s fault, however I do not know the way lengthy we’ll final with out charging further.”
At The Hungarian Pastry Store in Manhattan, proprietor Philip Binioris instructed ABC Information that he is attempting his finest to not move the upper price of eggs on to customers, although he, too, is not positive how lengthy he can soak up the more and more prohibitive price.
“It is irritating. I want to not increase our costs. I feel that we have now honest costs, and I like to have the ability to hold them steady,” he mentioned. “I am simply sort of ready to see how dangerous this will get earlier than I decide on how I’ll change costs. It is tight.”
Whereas customers, small companies and their prospects proceed to shell out extra for eggs amid the avian flu outbreak, the nation’s largest producer and distributor of eggs has reported hovering income.
Siblings Ernest Lepore and Adeline Lepore-Sessa present ABC Information their kitchen at New York Metropolis’s Ferrara Bakery, which has been working for over 100 years.
ABC Information
Cal-Maine Meals, in line with SEC filings, noticed an over three-fold enhance of their gross income of their fiscal 12 months 2023, on the daybreak of the chicken flu outbreak. And in line with their most recent filing, their gross income are up 342% by means of the second quarter of their fiscal 12 months 2025 versus the earlier fiscal 12 months.
Rispoli additionally instructed ABC Information that grocery consumers may see elevated costs even when the egg provide does start to get well, as grocery shops might search to recoup misplaced earnings. She mentioned that occurred when egg costs soared originally of the present avian flu outbreak.
“Within the aftermath of that, because the market corrected and got here down considerably, retailers had been then holding shelf costs larger to try to recapture a few of the margin that that they had beforehand forfeited,” she mentioned.
Again at Ferrara in Little Italy, Lepore is looking in every single place to search out different methods to economize so he would not have to extend their costs. He not too long ago upgraded his constructing’s cooling system and improved his fridges, saving cash on electrical energy in the long run. He is also taking a lesson from his grandparents, who stored the enterprise going by means of the Nice Despair, by baking smaller batches of products to be able to extra simply hold product recent and keep away from waste.
“Eggs are figuring out manufacturing,” he mentioned. “As we’re going into Easter, I’m going to be baking on the final minute to not waste an egg, as a result of there cannot be any left over.”
