'No one wants to pay $25 for breakfast': US restaurants are cracking under inflation

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Most menu items at the popular Philadelphia breakfast chain Green Eggs Cafe are – true to its name – made with eggs. Its co-owner Stephen Slaughter said that about 90% of its dishes depend on eggs, ticking off a short list: “Our French toast, our pancake batters, our hollandaise sauce, obviously eggs and omelets.” So when his vendors started charging $8 for a dozen eggs, all six Green Egg Cafe locations felt the pinch. Slaughter said that a year ago, the ingredients for a plate of bacon, eggs and toast with a side of coffee might have cost $3 or $4; he estimates those costs have now doubled.

“It’s cutting into our margins pretty significantly,” he said. And that’s a problem in a part of the restaurant sector known for converting relatively inexpensive ingredients into fast, affordable comfort foods. Egg prices alone have nearly doubled since December, according to the US Department of Agriculture, and many breakfast restaurants and diners are reeling. Waffle House, a chain with more than 2,000 locations, recently announced a $0.50-per-egg surcharge due to inflation and the worst avian influenza outbreak in history, as tens of millions of birds have been culled to contain its spread.

It’s not just eggs that have gone up in price. Coffee is at a 47-year high, driven by climate disruptions in Brazil and Vietnam, the world’s largest producers. The cost of frozen orange juice has nearly doubled since 2020, due to citrus disease and climate shocks. Flour, too, has become more expensive in recent years, with prices spiking in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Slaughter’s team last increased prices in October 2023 due to inflation. “We’re trying to do everything we can to not raise our prices. No one wants to go into a breakfast place and have to pay $25,” he said.

Experts and restaurateurs say breakfast spots – which often rely on markups made possible by cheap and versatile ingredients, high-volume sales and loyal customers – are particularly vulnerable to these price shocks. The industry’s conventional wisdom that it’s easier to turn a profit with breakfast food may be in jeopardy. Amy Smith, an economist with the consulting group Advanced Economics Solutions, said the median price increase for popular breakfast items like eggs, coffee, sausage, bacon and orange juice was 19% compared with last year and double 2020 costs.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/14/restaurants-inflation-egg-prices