At Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop downtown, cartons of beige and tan organic eggs filled part of a large metal refrigerator. The eggs are becoming harder and harder to buy.
“On any given day we’ll have eight of these full stacks down on the bottom row here,” manager Harrison Scheib said while pointing to the eggs. “We’re just taking what we can get right now.”
Eggs are in short supply due to a deadly strain of bird flu that has swept the nation, killing more than 20 million chickens since October and scrambling the egg market. The state of the egg-conomy is forcing Anchorage eateries, like Fire Island, to raise prices and rethink recipes. Some grocery stores are also limiting how many cartons of eggs customers can buy.
Bakers change recipes
Fire Island bakers normally use a lot of eggs. The popular bakery has two shops in Anchorage. Between both of them, they usually use up to 3,600 eggs each week. That’s enough to give 12 people the average number of eggs they consume in an entire year.
Due to the egg shortage, the company is making changes, Scheib said. It raised the price of macarons by 50 cents, because they use a lot of egg whites. It’s also planning to swap the raspberry lemon scone with another flavor because it uses egg-curd, a thick custard-like spread. The bakery’s challah bread normally goes through two rounds of egg wash, but Scheib said the first round has been swapped with water.
The bakery has also been experimenting with some new recipes, he said.
“We've been doing a lot of recipe testing,” he said. “Something like our croissant uses a lot of eggs. Specifically egg yolks, we’ll use those egg whites for other things. But it's such a large amount of eggs, we just kind of thought, ‘Can we cut this down at all?’”
Scheib said high prices are a concern, but he’s more worried about the overall availability of eggs.
Fire Island orders its eggs through Linford of Alaska, a wholesale distributor. The eggs are delivered twice a week from farms on the West Coast. Scheib said almost everything at the bakery is organic, and eggs are in a majority of their products.
When their distributor doesn’t have eggs, they have to look for local options, which he said takes more resources.
“Even if it is just at Costco, the labor that it costs to get that, we're putting people out on the road to go pick stuff up that they otherwise normally wouldn't be, and it just takes time and effort,” he said.
The average nationwide cost of a dozen large Grade A eggs hit a record $4.95 in January, according to the Consumer Price Index, a 96% increase from the year before. Egg prices are predicted to increase another 20% in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food price outlook.
‘I still have to buy them’
Eggs are a staple in Matt Martell’s pasta, and he buys several five-dozen packs at a time. He owns Alaska Pasta Company and sells fresh pasta to restaurants across the city.
He said egg prices just keep rising.
“I still have to buy them, which is kind of unfortunate,” he said. “Right now the prices have been going up, month after month, week after week it seems like. A couple weeks ago, Costco was $16 and then you go in a week later, and then it's $20. So, I mean, as it's going up, I'm adjusting my prices.”
The company raised prices 10 cents per pound of pasta for wholesale customers, and Martell said he’ll consider raising prices further to keep up with the cost of eggs.
This isn’t the first time Martell has experienced an egg shortage. A few summers ago, he said, he couldn’t find eggs anywhere locally, and had to choose between selling his pasta at a local farmers market or filling orders for his wholesale clients.
“Ultimately, wholesale is something that's super important to the business,” Martell said.
The bird flu outbreak has impacted almost 160 million birds since 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Alaska, 1,370 birds have been impacted.
Like Fire Island, Martell said he’s more concerned about the availability of eggs than the price. Eggs add a rich flavor to the company’s noodles, and not having eggs would completely change his product, he said.
“Pasta is traditionally flour and eggs. That's what it is, and that's what gives it its flavor,” he said. “That's always been the product that I want to take to restaurants, to take to markets, to sell to the people. Without it, it would just feel incomplete.”
Demand spikes for local eggs
Although bird flu is stressing some businesses, it’s benefiting others by spiking the demand for farm fresh eggs. Local suppliers say they’re struggling to keep up with that demand.
Karianne Smith owns Bushes Bunches Produce Stand in Palmer. The store sells regional food products, like seafood, potatoes and eggs. Smith sources from six egg producers, but said it’s hard to keep eggs on the shelves right now.
“Lately we've been keeping lists of people who want eggs,” Smith said. “They're almost all pre-sold right now and then if we do have them on the shelf, and people see that, they will buy four cartons at a time.”
A dozen large-size local chicken eggs is $10, about $2 more than a local grocery store.
Smith said it's not uncommon for people to drive from Anchorage or Wasilla to get their hands on local eggs.
In early February, eight people were on the waiting list to purchase a carton.
