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Waffle House drops egg surcharge as prices fall back to Earth (www.npr.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/usnews@beehaw.org

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In a welcome sign that sky-high egg prices are coming home to roost, Waffle House is dropping its 50 cent per egg surcharge.

Government price-checkers monitor prices around the country every month to compile the government's cost-of-living index. Staffing shortages have recently forced the Labor Department to scale back that data gathering.

"Egg-cellent news," the chain announced Tuesday in a social media post. "The egg surcharge is officially off the menu. Thanks for understanding."

Waffle House had added the surcharge in February as an outbreak of avian flu forced the culling of tens of millions of egg-laying chickens, sending prices to record highs. Since then, both wholesale and retail prices have begun to normalize, although retail egg prices in May were still up more than 40% from a year ago.

I can't say that lede actually makes sense. "Coming home to roost" does not idiomatically mean what is clearly intended here. Were this a story about Waffle House going out of business because of the egg surcharge, then, by all means, go with that.

It isn't, so ...

A local diner chain had the same surcharge for a while and dropped it last month. I'm just glad they didn't print new menus and make it permanent in either case.

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[–] SoupBrick@pawb.social 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh, thank goodness bird flu is no longer jacking up those prices! Must have died down. Oh.

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/data-map-commercial.html

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

The prices are also still like 5X what they were before this bout of bird flue started over 5 years ago.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Prices really haven’t come back to normal. Average prices is around 7 dollars a dozen, with lows around 5 dollars a dozen depending on area.

In 2019 it was between 1.30 and 2 dollars a dozen.

The H5 bird flu strain hasn’t been contained, and it probably never will be, it’s been rampant for nearly half a decade at this point and they’re still nowhere near containing it. It’s endemic in the migratory bird population. At this point the only flocks that won’t be routinely wiped by it are smaller flocks in better conditions.

Beyond the reality of higher turn over in flocks due to routine outbreaks, it also gives them an excuse to steadily press up prices to pad margins.