The 2020-present COVID-19 pandemic has hit the restaurant industry pretty hard, forcing many businesses to shut down temporarily and others to go bust due to supply chain issues and labor shortages. But customers have returned and seem hungrier than ever.
And now the egg shortage. Here’s how four small, locally owned restaurants are working to make sure the supply meets the demand:
The Farmacy, Knoxville: Bettina Hamblin says her 90-seat restaurant in the Bearden area goes through between 80 and 100 dozen locally sourced eggs a week, say an average of 1,100 eggs weekly to some 57,000 annually.
“We source what we can locally. Of course, things come and seasons change and go as seasons change,” Hamblin says. “We can’t get local tomatoes in the winter. But we do try to work locally as much as possible. It’s going to be a better product. It’s better for the taste of the food, better for the consumer of the food.
“With all the things going on in the world, why not keep your money in your own community. Why not support your neighbor? That’s kind of our philosophy on it.”
Elliston Place Soda Shop, Nashville: General manager Craig Clifft says the recently expanded midtown shop goes through 2,200 to 2,500 eggs per week, “which is a lot of eggs. We buy them in cases, and that case contains 144 eggs in every case or thereabouts.”
That translates into about 10,000 eggs a month or 120,000 annually.
“The availability is not as bad as it used to be, like back before the holidays. (It takes) a little time to get them (from several vendors), but now we can find them,” Clifft says.
“We’ve had to literally go where we look at three or four different places and then decide each week, ‘where are we going to buy eggs from?’”
Clifft says he started noticing the shortage last spring. Then it went from bad to worse.
“At first, you were running out of it. There was a supply and demand issue, so you couldn’t find the eggs, you couldn’t get the eggs or the companies that we were relying on to distribute them would show up and not have our eggs,” Clifft says.
“They’d be on the invoice but they wouldn’t be on the truck. So, as I kind of got a handle on that, supply demand drove the price up. And you started seeing it creeping up. Literally overnight, it went from $30 a case to $65 a case, and that’s a big leap.
“Now, to look at it to be $95 a case, three times what you’re used to paying and had been paying for years, that’s not one of those items that you really thought much about. Beef prices change, and the price of hamburger, chicken or whatever … those all have always changed.
“Eggs have always been one of those things that you paid this much for an egg, and that’s what you paid,” Clifft says. “But in the last year, that’s just not been the case.”
Breakfast is a staple at Elliston Place Soda Shop, served all day. But is also famous for its huge pies, which, of course, eggs are needed for the recipe. The current price of eggs has forced some menu adjustments.
“Out of our eight (breakfast) items, (all but) one has eggs that come with that,” Clifft says. “So when you realize that the price of putting the eggs on the plate is approaching the price of putting the bacon or the sausage or the plate, you have to start making some business decisions.”
Clifft says he tries not to pass along their prices to customers but that it’s sometimes inevitable. Eggs aren’t the only thing costing more these days.
“A lot of times, restaurants just…we don’t change prices. We’ve just got to take the hit and watch it come back down and kind of go up and down and things,” Clifft says. “Squash doubled in a day. Lettuce was a big one that took a hit before the eggs. California had the drought and then they turned around and had the floods that wiped away all the lettuce.
“If you could get it, iceberg lettuce went from $30 a case to $140 a case in one day. So, do you take the salad off your menu? We don’t serve lettuce with our hamburger now. And we won’t until the price comes back down. It costs a dollar for that piece of lettuce to be on the hamburger. It just doesn’t work.”
Midtown Café, Nashville: Chef Max Pastor says his restaurant, open for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner, goes through two cases of eggs a day Monday through Friday and three cases on weekends. The cases they purchase contain 15 dozen eggs, or 180 eggs to a case, averaging roughly 2,880 eggs per week.
The chef says with that kind of volume, the restaurant’s motto is to handle the eggs – mostly the cage-free kind – with care.
“We have to give customers the best quality in trying to do our best to make sure they’re satisfied,” Pastor says, noting that eggs are used in many of their from-scratch menu items, including hollandaise sauce, breads and desserts.
“We have to be careful not to waste (eggs) and how we use our product because that increases on the price. Sometimes it’s very hard to do when you are busy, busy. It’s a lot of work and a lot of eggs that we work. You can say that every egg costs 50 cents, so it’s a lot of money.
“It used to be that the egg was a cheaper way to get protein. Even in some countries, they don’t have a lot of resources and they need eggs; that’s the cheapest way to get protein,” Pastor says. “But now it’s just a big problem. Now, we’re just trying to take care of our product and trying to waste as (little) as we can.”
Rayburn says the egg shortage is just the latest crisis that smaller restaurants like his face.
“Eggs are something that we sell quite a few of for a small restaurant, because we served over 93,000 customers last year in the 80-seat restaurant,” Rayburn says. “The overall wholesale numbers have indicated that our overall food costs have gone up about 10% to 12%. “I read all (industry) publications or scan them on a daily basis and eggs have been one of the higher areas, although butter and margarine are up dramatically (and) lettuce is up dramatically.”
Wendell Smith’s Restaurant, Nashville: The 100-seat, meat-and-three in West Nashville – which has been in operation for 70 years and four generations of owner – uses about 360 dozen eggs a week, according to owner Cook. That would be more than 4,300 a week and about 225,000 annually.
“We’re getting enough eggs. We’re just having to pay for them,” Cook says, noting that the restaurant absorbs rising expenses without passing them on to customers. “We’re actually having to settle for smaller sizes at cheaper prices.
“We sell a lot (of eggs) with breakfast but we put a lot in cornbread and things we don’t get paid for. You know what I mean? The giveaway stuff. Well, we get paid for cornbread but they’re figured in the price of the meal.
“We’re just taking it on the chin. We don’t adjust our prices daily, like a retail store can do. Every time they get a load in, they can change the price, depending on what they paid for it. But my menus are set and it’s hard. So we’re just taking it on the chin and keep on rocking. And thank God we’re selling some.”
Cook’s glad to get eggs at whatever price. “I mean, if I can’t get eggs, I can’t make cornbread, banana pudding or breakfast. We do a good breakfast down here,” he says. “We probably seat 500-600 people a day in here, and we’re open six days a week. So that’s pretty good … 3,000 to 5,000 people a week, I guess. That’s not bad flow for a place that seats only 100 people.”
But he does keep tabs on those rising costs.
“Like I said, it’s trending down this past week. But you never know what’s gonna go. We hope it keeps trending down. Traditionally, those eggs are $20 to $30 for 30 dozen. So they’re up 500% or more.