The Waffle Home proposition is fairly easy: It’s a 24/7, 365-day restaurant chain that makes the majority of its earnings by serving low-cost meals to as many individuals as potential. Yearly, it sells 85 million strips of bacon, 58 million cups of espresso, 272 million eggs, 153 million hash browns, and 124 million waffles nationally, all whereas staying inexpensive.
Waffle Home’s low costs are made potential by its no-frills eating expertise. Every Waffle Home has the identical ground plan, which is designed for buyer contact and effectivity. Reasonably than chasing tendencies, Waffle Home depends on a sense of nostalgia clients really feel upon getting into.
One other factor that makes a enterprise like this viable is its constant menu. The chain serves breakfast ’around the clock, which implies diners can benefit from breakfast for dinner and eat waffles and eggs after a late night time out.
However now, with an aggressive pressure of avian flu hurting the nationwide egg provide and inflicting costs to rise, Waffle Home introduced Wednesday that it’s including a 50-cent cost per egg.
“The continuing egg shortage caused by HPAI (bird flu) has caused a dramatic increase in egg prices. Customers and restaurants are being forced to make difficult decisions,” Waffle Home mentioned in an announcement to CNN.
Forward of the 2024 election, Republicans made inflation and rising meals prices a focus, and voters informed pollsters they largely trusted President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris on reducing costs. However as an alternative of addressing the impacts of the hen flu, Trump is simply too busy dismantling and defunding the well being companies that would presumably assist.
Based on CBS Information’ value tracker, the price of one dozen eggs is now 60% larger than it was in 2024 and 160% larger than it was in 2019. In some elements of the US, a dozen eggs can price as a lot as $7. That’s partly as a result of the hen flu is forcing farmers to slaughter thousands and thousands of chickens per thirty days, and there seems to be no finish in sight.
Though the Trump administration may supply a hand to federal well being companies, his lackeys seem extra targeted on blaming skyrocketing costs on former President Joe Biden.
Throughout her first press convention in late January, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned that the previous administration “directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore a lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”
However that’s solely half of the story, as Poynter famous. The method of culling chickens is a long-standing one which was in place throughout Trump’s first time period. As a result of hen flu is deadly, it requires the federal government to cull whole flocks as soon as the virus has been detected.
And whereas the hen flu has been plaguing farmers and the egg provide since 2022, the outbreak elevated tenfold in 2024 as a result of virus’s resurgence.
Based on the U.S. Division of Agriculture, 17.2 million egg-laying hens had been slaughtered in November and December 2024, accounting for practically half of all birds killed that 12 months.
As of December, the common value per one dozen eggs was $4.15. Whereas that’s not fairly as excessive because the 2022 common, which was $4.22, costs may improve by as a lot as 20% this 12 months, in keeping with the Division of Agriculture’s January meals value outlook.
“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re in this for a while. Until we have time without a detection, unfortunately, this very, very tight egg supply is going to continue,” Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, informed CNN.
If solely Trump weren’t so busy instigating commerce wars, possibly he’d have time to satisfy one in all his precise marketing campaign guarantees: reducing the price of groceries.
