Bruce Schelhaas gets confronted frequently by people asking why the price on any number of products goes up, the latest example being the rising price of eggs.
The answer is simple.
“Two words: bird flu,” said the Tracy Food Pride owner. “People ask about it all the time. There’s just less eggs around, so you know the prices are going to go up. We’ve noticed the difference in sales; we sell about half of what we used to. Our margins on eggs aren’t set as high as other grocery items, so we tend to stay fairly competitive, depending on some of these bigger companies that can buy a lot more eggs.”
But even the larger so-called box stores aren’t able to keep prices low.
With the hen supply down, the price of commodity eggs will more than likely stay at its current elevated levels.
According to experts, the commodity egg level is likely to continue to decline 4-5% a year at about 50% of its regular volume, which is down about 80% from normal.