Despite reports of falling egg prices, Philadelphia restaurateurs are still feeling the tight squeeze of “eggflation.”
“Margins are super tight,” said Liz Fleming, co-owner of Ants Pants Cafe on South Street, where eggs are the most popular item on the menu. “It’s just been a little bit of a nightmare.”
Fleming owns the Australian-inspired brunch spot with Nancy Silverman and Paul Puma. They put a surcharge of $1 on all egg dishes about a week ago.
“It’s still hard to make money off of that,” she said. “But at the same time how much are people going to be willing to pay for a simple sandwich when they can go to Wawa and get whatever for much cheaper?”
Taco Heart, a Tex-Mex spot known for its breakfast tacos, also recently raised costs on egg items by 50 cents.
“We are facing a six-time cost increase on our most common ingredient,” said Nano Wheedan, the owner of Taco Heart. “We are now 11 weeks into 2025, and we would be a profitable business this year so far … except for eggs,” he said. “We’re spending over $1,000 a week extra on eggs. That’s not even what we spend on eggs. That’s the increase.”
Fleming echoed this struggle.
“There are times where we are not taking pay,” she said. “There have definitely been sacrifices made.”
‘The perfect protein’
Humans have been eating eggs for thousands of years, and for good reason. Eggs are fast to cook and they are extremely versatile. They serve as a building block ingredient in many baked goods, pastries, custards and pastas. Place an egg on any rice or noodle dish and it’s guaranteed to become richer and more delicious.
“I mean, they’re in everything,” Fleming said. “They’re just the perfect protein.”
At their core, eggs are fundamental. They are the beginning of life, and a top item on grocery lists around the country.
“Even when it comes to scrambling, there’s thousands of methods for how people do it,” said Matt Cahn, owner of the popular sandwich spot Middle Child, which serves a “three-finger-thick” breakfast sandwich. “It’s something that people have been eating for a really, really long time, so I think historically it feels significant to us as human beings.”
And yet, over the last couple of months, this delicious source of protein that has always been reliable, filling and cheap has been causing serious trouble for restaurants with popular breakfast items.
Middle Child announced this week that it was raising the price of egg-based items from 50 cents to $1.50 — noting they were projected to spend $80,000 more on eggs this year at the current pricing.
Cahn, like others, was hesitant to raise prices. “At first it’s like, alright, well, we’ll just eat the cost. We’ll suck up some of the money, whatever,” he said. “And then you start to see it just go and go. And you’re like, ‘Oh, wait.’ ”
“That’s life, right?” he said. “Eggs is tough and eggs is life.”
In some ways, eggs are beginning to feel more like avocados — a pricey add-on worth an extra dollar. The problem is that eggs are not an add-on. They are essential to many signature dishes at popular city spots.
Darnel’s Cakes, the popular bakery cafe that helps raise awareness about HIV and AIDS, also recently raised prices on their egg sandwiches and quiches by $1.
“Our breakfast sandwich is probably our biggest seller as an item,” said Kyle Cuffie-Scott, Darnel’s chef and founder. “This year we had to really take into account the fact that a lot of our products use eggs, from our bread to our cookies, brownies, quiche and, of course, our breakfast sandwiches.”
Sometimes when an ingredient gets pricey, restaurants can pivot. Cuffie-Scott has contemplated testing vegan-substitutes for his baked goods, although there are no current plans to do so. However, that’s not really possible when eggs are the star of the dish.
“Eggs are an interesting one for us,” Cahn said. “We could take a steak off the menu temporarily, or use a different cut, you know, get creative with it, but eggs and our egg sandwiches are something that we can’t pivot from.”
Middle Child’s signature breakfast sandwich is known for its hefty egg ratio — made with three to four eggs.
“That sandwich is really, literally just meant to highlight eggs,” Cahn said. “I saw some thread that people were like, what if you just put less eggs on the sandwich? And I’m like, that’s fine, but then you could go somewhere else.”
A lack of transparency
Because there is no good egg substitute, some restaurants have had to change tactics on how they acquire them in order to save money.
This may include popping into local grocery stores or markets for cheaper pricing. But many times these spots have caps on how much one can actually buy, or they may have a limited supply. Plus, there can be the extra logistical cost of sending someone to pick up eggs from different places and paying for that service.
What’s more, egg prices are changing every week, and that lack of stability makes it hard for restaurants to plan ahead. For some restaurant owners, the lack of pricing transparency from suppliers has led to a sense of distrust.
“I’m so interested to hear if anybody’s making more money and if there’s any abuse in the system,” Wheedan wondered. “I don’t understand on a micro level how all of these egg people are talking to each other and moving prices together.”
Fleming felt a similar frustration, especially when comparing costs at the grocery store to what she is paying from her supplier.
“It doesn’t make sense to me, and I tried reaching out to them to say, ‘Why is this cheaper here at the supermarket than it is at a wholesale?’ ” she explained. “But they just said the prices of eggs are high right now, and I don’t know if they’re taking advantage or I’m not sure.”
And while there are some reports of egg prices dropping, this does not feel like a certainty in the restaurant scene.
“We could say there’s hope,” said Cuffie-Scott, of Darnel’s. “But, I’ve heard nothing but bad news from all the estimators about will the egg price go up or down? It’s still like, kind of scheduled to go up, just because summer is coming, and I don’t know what’s going to happen over the next few months.”
Getting support from the community
Even though restaurants are raising prices, many have said that this doesn’t completely make up the cost for how much they are spending on eggs.
“50 cents almost recoups what we put into it,” Wheedan said. “So, it still doesn’t get us back to where we were in August in terms of the price of an egg-based taco, but it gets us really, really close.”
He said that despite all of the hardship he is facing with the restaurant, he still feels “grateful” to be a part of the South Philly community and the Philly food scene. After posting that Taco Heart’s prices were rising, people reached out.
“The number of positive responses is so moving,” he said. “We feel it every day when we’re in the restaurant, we’re handing food to people. For us to deliver bad news and have the community respond with support and positivity has meant so much to us, and is why we get to stay here.”
Fleming echoed this feeling of appreciation from her customers for choosing to come to her restaurant.
“I mean, they could go wherever they want, and they choose us,” she said. “So we’re really proud of being open for 20 years, and hopefully we’ll continue for a few more.”
Cahn believes that even with the dollar increase on the Middle Child egg sandwich, local customers are still getting a deal.
“If you can get a sandwich with eggs and good cheese and locally made bread, and your eggs are made to order, and you’re getting three and a half eggs for $10.50, it’s not a bad deal,” he said. “You know, go to New York. Go to L.A. and try to get that.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
