SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WXYZ) — Rising egg prices may scramble grocery budgets.
Looking at the most recent averages, the cost of a dozen eggs doubled from 2023 to 2024. After a spike early last year, it seemed like the prices stabilized.
Eggs are an essential on many peoples’ grocery lists, but the high prices and low supply are impacting more than just the consumer.
Robin Jones says she buys them at least once a week for her family.
"I love it in my salads, breakfast, everything," Jones said.
She says she's noticed a recent hike in prices.
"It was maybe about four or five dollars for a carton. Now, it's like 8, 9 dollars," Jones said. "It's scary. It's like what's next?"
Watch our September 2024 report on high egg prices in the video below:
The owner of Martin's Coney Island in Southfield says he's also feeling the burn of the high prices. Sokol’s restaurant goes through more than 3,000 eggs a week.
"We used to pay about 40 bucks for a case of eggs. Now, we're paying about 110 (dollars)," he said.
We spoke with Sokol back in September about a similar story. Now, a few months later, he says he says he's forced to consider raising his prices.
"It's unfortunate, but we do have to do that in order to survive," he said.
For the grocery store Market Fresh in Beverly Hills, manager Rich Dawdy says it's the low supply of eggs that's impacting them the most.
"We're getting about 20% of what we would normally get," Dawdy said. "We're doing the best we can and we do have eggs."
But why are we still seeing high egg prices and low supply? According to University of Michigan economics professor Ariel Shwayder, it's most likely the bird flu and not the new cage-free egg law that went into effect in the state on Dec. 31, 2024.
"Because we're having to kill off flocks, the supply is down and that's causing the price to go up," Shwayder said.
As for what to expect next, he says consumers can monitor the avian flu outbreak.
"That would be the thing that I would be looking at is keeping track of that and if the number of flocks where this is detected keeps going up, then we should expect egg prices to keep going up. If that starts to abate, then we can see prices start to come back down I think," Shwayder said.
