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Waffle House restaurants are now charging an extra 50 cents for every egg they sell. That's a lot of eggs over 2,000 locations in 25 states. Marlon Hyde from member station WABE reports that the Georgia-based chain plans to change the extra egg fee as they monitor prices.
MARLON HYDE, BYLINE: Darlene McCrory pulls up to an Atlanta Waffle House after working a late shift. She notices a bright yellow-and-red poster in the window that says 50 cents per egg.
DARLENE MCCRORY: So I'm about to order an extra egg now, so I - now I got to pay the extra - what? - 50 cents? Yeah, yeah.
HYDE: She says the surcharge will not stop her from getting her signature all-star special. That comes with eggs, a waffle and a variety of sides.
MCCRORY: We all love Waffle House, so we can't really change what's going on.
HYDE: What's going on is that Waffle House says that an unprecedented rise in egg prices is forcing the surcharge on its most popular item, one that Waffle House regular Halo Harris may be skipping for a while.
HALO HARRIS: Yeah, I saw that on the news this morning. I'm not finna buy eggs. I'm going to get me some grits and sausage to keep it pushing.
HYDE: So you're skipping the egg, but you're...
HARRIS: I'm skipping the eggs.
HYDE: ...Not skipping Waffle House?
Waffle House serves approximately 272 million eggs a year, according to its website. Sina Golara is a business professor at Georgia State University. He says it was a good idea for Waffle House to focus only on raising egg prices.
SINA GOLARA: This will actually have the effect of pushing customers to order items that don't have eggs, so it might actually help balance demand a little bit and move pressure out of eggs and onto some other items.
HYDE: The American Egg Board says 50 million laying hens were lost to bird flu in the past year, while the demand for eggs went up. Golara says the future of egg prices is not yet clear.
GOLARA: Very hard to tell because a lot of it also depends on the virus progress itself.
HYDE: This current bird flu outbreak has been around since 2022 and tends to increase in winter months, Golara says. As the weather warms and the virus gets weaker, he expects prices could come down again. But until then, small business owners like Karima Goodman have to decide whether to pass on the cost to customers. She runs Sweet Brown Suga Bakery in an Atlanta suburb.
KARIMA GOODMAN: As a business owner, you have to take the hit on the eggs, especially when eggs make up 90% of the ingredients in the bakery.
HYDE: With prices still rising, some grocery stores are running out of eggs. Others are limiting the number of eggs people can buy. For NPR News, I'm Marlon Hyde in Atlanta.
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