Eggs on the griddle at Marcy’s Diner in Portland, which doesn’t plan to add a surcharge to egg dishes to cover their increased cost. “I feel like where it’s the pinnacle of our business, I just can’t,” said Mandy Lacourse, Marcy’s owner. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Mandy Lacourse, owner of Marcy’s Diner in Portland, says she’s considered putting “market price” on the diner menu for egg dishes, like restaurants do for seafood dishes, just as a joke.

“I do think ‘market price’ would be hilarious on a menu,” she said.

But she has no plans to actually raise her prices.

“We will not be doing an egg surcharge,” she said. “I feel like where it’s the pinnacle of our business, I just can’t.”

The Portland diner, like so many other bakeries, diners and restaurants, is grappling with higher prices on eggs, triggered by a highly contagious bird flu outbreak. Avian flu has wreaked havoc on flocks of chickens around the country, resulting in shortages and near-record high prices both in grocery stores and for restaurants.

For these businesses, cutting back on eggs isn’t an option. And deciding whether to raise prices for customers is tough.

When it comes to price fluctuations for the ingredients used at Two Fat Cats Bakery, owner Stacy Begin says she’s learned to “ride it out with nerves of steel.”

A few years ago, the cost of the berries for their pies shot up. Last year, it was flour and sugar. Now, it’s eggs.

“It’s been a wild ride the last three years with prices,” Begin said. “Everything has been so unpredictable that we kind of prepare for anything at this point. The egg prices going up just feels like it’s par for the course.”

Retail prices for a dozen large eggs were up 65%, from $2.51 in December 2023 to about $4.15 last month, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That’s down slightly from the record retail high of $4.82 per dozen in January 2023.

Stacy Begin, owner of Two Fat Cats Bakery in Portland, says the cost of eggs has more than doubled, but that she hasn’t passed that cost onto her customers yet. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

The impact of the avian flu has significantly affected not just the price, but the availability of eggs. While eggs sold in stores and used in restaurants are safe to eat, getting them there is a challenge.

“It’s an operational nightmare to even get eggs in house,” said Maggie Rubin, a co-owner and director of operations at Bread & Friends, a Portland bakery and restaurant.

At European Bakery and Tea Room in Falmouth, operations manager Branden Stevans has started worrying about how to source eggs and how much they will cost. One of his distributors lets him know when a shipment comes in, but often the price is $85 for 15 dozen — twice the price the bakery used to pay.

“Wondering if we’re going to get eggs next week is a big thing for us,” Stevans said. “It’s a crucial ingredient for everything we make.”

A CRUCIAL INGREDIENT

The owners of Bread & Friends recently added a note to their website notifying customers that they were temporarily raising some prices. The price of three items — soft scrambled eggs, omelets and French toast — went up by $1 because they use multiple eggs per serving.

“Eggs are seen as this low-priced commodity item, but right now they’re really not,” Rubin said.

Having to raise prices is tough, Rubin said, but so far she “hasn’t heard a peep” from customers about the price adjustment.

At Sweets & Co., a gluten-free bakery in Saco that opened in October, owner Lorraine Fagela hasn’t adjusted her prices, even though she’s paying far more for eggs. Some weeks her cost is $150 for a case of 15 dozen that used to cost $40.

“Our bottom line has been affected, but as a business owner, I basically eat the cost because we hope it will be temporary,” Fagela said.

At Scratch Baking Co. in South Portland, the impact of higher prices wasn’t very noticeable until a week and a half ago, said pastry manager Meghan Wilcox. The bakery gets its eggs from a Maine farm that acts as a middleman for smaller farms across the state. They didn’t raise their egg prices until two weeks ago, when they instituted a 30% increase for bulk eggs, she said.

Julian Bither plates eggs at Marcy’s Diner in Portland on Thursday. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Wilcox said the owners of Scratch have not raised prices because they like that the business is a neighborhood bakery where regulars come in a few times a week for a coffee and muffin.

“We don’t want to gouge them when this is their special treat,” she said. “We don’t want to nickel and dime everyone, but if it doesn’t soften, we’ll have to make changes.”

Begin, at Two Fat Cats, said she considers whether she’s dealing with a long-term cost increase for ingredients or a short-term increase that she can ride out.

“We try to prepare as much as we can within our budgeting and working with our vendors,” she said. “At the end of the day, we’re a bakery and we use a lot of eggs. We’re going to have to use eggs. It’s not like other ingredients where maybe they aren’t as crucial and we can skip making something with that ingredient.”

AN ONGOING CHALLENGE 

Julian Bither, a cook at Marcy’s Diner, says they go through about 20 dozen eggs on a weekday and up to 50 dozen on weekends. A few weeks ago, the suppliers had no eggs at all.

“I got a little nervous and ordered liquid eggs because I was like ‘I’m just going to grab a case in case,'” Lacourse said, saying she could use them in scrambles or for French toast.

Rubin said one of Bread & Friends’ distributors recently told her the availability and pricing of eggs will likely continue to be a challenge for the next nine months to a year.

“That’s not what we were hoping to hear,” she said. “We’re just playing it a bit day-by-day and week-by-week. Hopefully things will get easier soon.”

Staff Photographer Gregory Rec contributed to this article.