There used to be a time when customers at the Sandwich Spot Deli in Flatbush would buy a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich just to save a couple of bucks.
It was a budget-friendly option to the roast beef and cheddar, or the popular turkey and Swiss. Not anymore, not since the cost of eggs has soared beyond the price of the golden ones that a certain goose once laid.
“A carton of eggs right now is like $12,” said Abod Ali, 22, who makes sandwiches at the Flatbush Ave. Sandwich Spot. “It’s going up like crazy. I can’t even make bacon, egg and cheese; sausage, egg and cheese, omelets; all that.”
Previously, a bacon egg and cheese sandwich at the deli would cost $4 or $5, he said. Ali said he used to sell about 100 of the sandwiches every day. Now he’s only selling about 30.
“It dropped like crazy,” he said. “If they don’t find a solution to this, I’ll just buy a whole bunch of chickens and put them in the basement, figure something out.”
The egg price crisis, brought on by the bird flu epidemic, has cooked up some creative solutions. To boil down the sticker shock, several bodegas in the Bronx started selling eggs “loosie” style — several eggs at a time — the same way they do with cigarettes.
When customers at the corner stores balked at paying $12 or more for a dozen eggs, store owners began selling them in smaller quantities. At Pamela’s Green Deli in Morrisania, owner Radhames Rodriguez is selling three eggs in a plastic bag for $2.99.
“I’ve been in business for 40 years and I’ve never seen the eggs so high like that,” Rodriguez told CBS.
He said the idea came to him after seeing customers leave full cartons of eggs on the counter.
“If you have $20 and you want to make breakfast for two or three people, and you’re already spending $12 for one item, something,” he said, “how are they going to buy the bread, the milk, the butter and all that stuff?”
The nationwide average for egg prices isn’t as high as it is in New York, but consumers across the country are still reeling from sticker shock.
Data from the most recent consumer price index show that prices for a dozen grade A eggs in U.S. cities jumped 15% in the month of January alone to an average of $4.95, shattering the previous record of $4.82 from two years ago.
Over the past year, egg prices have increased 53% and have more than doubled from a low reached in August 2023.
The price jump has not gone unnoticed at the White House, where President Trump mentioned the increase during his first cabinet meeting.
“Eggs are a disaster,” Trump said. “The secretary of agriculture is going to be showing you a chart that’s actually mind-boggling what’s happened. How low they were with us [in the first Trump term], how high they are now. I think we can do something about it.”
With the price of eggs reaching record highs, the Trump administration is looking into importing more eggs from other countries and increasing funding for efforts to fight the spread of avian flu, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
That would be good news for Joan Sheridan, 68, of Bay Ridge, a retired dental hygienist who said she somehow manages to make a dozen eggs last a whole month.
“I’m still eating the same amount,” she said. “I eat them on the weekends, scrambled, sometimes hard-boiled. It bothers me because prices are high and I’m on a fixed income. But it’s still not inhibiting me from buying it. I just eat it on the weekends because it’s like a luxury.”
She said she bought a dozen eggs recently for about $10.
That’s a dollar more than they were going for at the Smoke Shop Deli and Grocery in Flatbush Customers there were paying about half that price just three months ago, said deli clerk Jordy Ortiz.
“Everybody’s struggling. I’m just hoping that it comes down,” Ortiz said. “Sometimes the customers look at the pricing of the eggs, and they’ll leave it there. But sometimes they ask us, ‘Why is it so high?’ So I have to explain the best that I can that it’s not us. I mean, obviously we do set the pricing, but it’s because the market also has increased the pricing on us.”
But the egg news Ortiz gives his customers isn’t all bad.
He said a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich there is still five bucks.
