$3,000 more a week just for eggs. How are Fresno breakfast spots surviving bird flu?
If the skyrocketing price of eggs is putting a dent in the household grocery budget, imagine going through 5,000 eggs a week.
Breakfast restaurants all over Fresno routinely serve up that many eggs and are reeling from the cost.
Bird flu, also known as H5N1 avian flu, is driving the price increase, caused by an egg shortage as millions of chickens are killed in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.
Nationally, the average price of a dozen large eggs has gone from an average $2.29 this time last year to $8.07 as of Friday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In California, prices are even higher, at $9.22 per dozen. A combination of factors are to blame, including higher production costs, bird flu and the requirement that eggs be raised in a cage-free system.
Ask Sandy Richardson, manager of Al’s Cafe, the busy Mexican-American breakfast and lunch spot on Olive Avenue, about the price of eggs and she says, “You mean what’s killing us?”
The increase in egg prices is costing the restaurant an extra $3,000 a week, the owner said. And prices are predicted to rise another 20% in 2025, according to the USDA.
How do local breakfast restaurants survive such massive price hikes?
So far, it’s been a combination of coping methods for restaurants in Fresno: Raising menu prices. Cutting back on server shifts. One Fresno restaurant owner even made a public plea for help to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Rising menu prices
Al’s Cafe a little over a month ago raised prices on its menu, including top sellers huevos rancheros and chile verde and eggs.
They tried to keep their prices below other restaurants in town, knowing that many of their customers are on limited budgets, Richardson said.
A two-egg breakfast, for example, went from $11.99 to $13.99 and comes with eggs prepared any style, a choice of meat, and potatoes or rice and beans.
“We had to raise the prices because it was just killing us,” she said. “It’s not like we’re making a killing, but we’re staying afloat.”
Surprisingly, most customers seemed to understand the higher prices, she said. Al’s didn’t see a slowdown in business.
One unexpected reaction, however, was a repeated decrease in tips from large parties — probably caused by the increased prices. After one server spent an hour and a half waiting on a group of 25 people who left a $5 tip, the restaurant added a new policy. A mandatory minimum tip now appears on checks of groups of six or more people.
The owners of the Red Caboose Café in Clovis have resisted raising prices — until now.
“I’m at a point where we’re going to have to do something,” said co-owner Teresa Claborn.
On a recent weekday, she was reviewing the menu, seeing where she could raise prices. They had absorbed the extra costs for as long as they could, she said.
She switched from her regular restaurant suppliers (who were charging about $120 or $130 for a case of 15 dozen eggs) to a local egg ranch in Clovis. There, she’d been paying $90 a case, but that deal was coming to an end, she said.
And being a breakfast restaurant, there’s only so many menu changes she can make. It’s not like a dinner restaurant, where she can take lobster off the menu when it gets too pricey and replace it with steak or pork chops.
Eggs are all over the menu.
“It goes into almost anything in breakfast, some of our salads — tuna salad, chicken salad, chef salad,” she said. “It goes into almost everything that we do.”
Help from Costco or the governor?
At Benaddiction, the rock-n-roll-themed breakfast restaurant at Maple and Behymer avenues, the owner went public on Instagram asking the governor to do something.
The restaurant was looking at paying $150 for a case of eggs from its regular suppliers. Instead, owner James Caples is bringing in a cook and server an hour early to fill in for him while he waits in line at Costco for it to open and buys eggs there.
He’s getting the same number of eggs at Costco for $53.97, with no delivery fee.
Egg prices can vary wildly by store or supplier, depending on how much access they have to egg wholesalers, whether they have fixed-priced contracts, or if a store artificially keeps egg prices low to lure shoppers in, hoping they will spend money on other products while they’re there.
Caples is not taking a paycheck right now, relying on tips and his wife’s salary. He’s also cutting back other workers’ shifts here and there to make up for rising expenses.
“This is how bad things are,” he said.
In his Instagram video, he asked Newsom to help. Caples suggested an executive order allowing a one-month break from paying the sales tax the restaurant collects from customers to the state.
He and others have reached out to the governor’s office directly, but have not heard back.
He points out that U.S. Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno and others have introduced a bill to make sure poultry farmers are compensated for their losses. That’s great, he said, but what about other industries such as restaurants that avian flu is affecting?
“It’s already at a point,” Caples said, “where I have to wonder if I’m going to survive.”
This story was originally published February 22, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
