Breakfast is getting more egg-spensive

Breakfast is getting more egg-spensive. Its over $3 a dozen on Average in town.
The price of eggs is rising like a souffle — from $1.19 per dozen on May 5 to $2.62 last week — thanks to an avian-flu outbreak in the Midwest that has forced farmers to kill off nearly 45 million chickens.

“It’s having a huge effect on price,” said Urner Barry vice president Randy Pesciotta, an analyst who tracks the dairy industry. “We don’t know when it is going to stop. Fortunately you have no new outbreaks this week, but there are still lots of chickens very close to where it happened.”
Restaurants, grocers, and corner stores are mulling whether to absorb the costs or pass the yolk to consumers.
C-Town and Bravo grocery stores raised their prices by 50 cents to $2.59 per dozen in the past month and are preparing for another hike. “We’ve already sent out a bulletin to the stores . . . and are in the process of making a corporate sign so they can let consumers know what is going on,” said Krasdale exec Robert Policano, a C-Town wholesaler.
Policano expects products with egg ingredients — including baked goods, pasta and mayonnaise — to become more expensive.
But restaurants that use organic ingredients say they have not been affected by the outbreak and predict they may gain shell-shocked customers.
“I think more and more people will make sure they get organic eggs instead of conventional ones,” said Leith Hill, owner of West Village eatery Ellery Greens. “Who wants to pay the same price for eggs that come from a potentially contaminated source that could potentially make you sick?”