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.
But restaurants risk alienating customers who are already feeling squeezed by inflation. “Companies that are selling these things don’t have a lot of room to increase prices because consumers are already on edge,” Smith said. “If they’re paying triple or quadruple for a dozen eggs every week and coffee is going up, it’s certainly going to impact the decision to go out for a fancy brunch.”
Daniel Soloway, director of procurement for the Mecha Noodle Bar chain, said: “Whether you’re a high-end, top-tier bakery in an urban setting or a Starbucks, there are few places to hide for a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee in 2025.”
Restaurants that serve dinner or have larger menus can increase the prices on side items or drinks without raising eyebrows. “At a breakfast place, if the cost of protein – sausage and bacon – is going up, eggs are going up and flour is affecting the cost of bread, there’s no room to improve things for yourself,” he said. “You’re exposed.”
Many restaurants are adapting by adding new menu items whose raw ingredients cost less. “Everybody I’m talking to is trying to figure out something that can offset [costs] and give the consumer another option,” Soloway said. But that’s a tricky feat for businesses that have staked their reputations on specific dishes.
“Most of what we’re famous for is our pancakes, French toast, waffles, biscuits, egg dishes, eggs Benedict,” said Neil Kleinberg, chef and co-owner of Clinton St Baking Co in New York City. On busy weekends, customers often wait two or three hours for a seat – and those specialties. “So it’s very hard to tell someone to order a side of fruit and avocado and toast.”
Like Slaughter, Kleinberg and his team raised prices across the board about a year ago to keep up with inflation: the eggs Benedict that cost $16 a few years ago now cost $18. He anticipates another increase to keep up with current trends.
“We’re getting either price-gouged, or the prices are out of control or fluctuating so much that we don’t know how much to charge for an omelet or an eggs Benedict,” Kleinberg said. He has gone from paying about $100 for a case of 360 eggs to nearly $300.
Sam Yoo, the owner of Golden Diner in New York’s Chinatown, has grown accustomed to price fluctuations since he opened his restaurant in 2019. “Every year, we have to talk to our purveyors and [ask]: ‘Why did eggs go up so much this year?’” he said. “It happens all the time.”
He acknowledged that the current increases were more significant, but said he was trying to ride them out. “It is going to affect us and our bottom line, but we opened the diner in our community. We still want to make our dining experience as accessible as possible,” he said. “So we’re trying not to knee-jerk react.”
He’s relying on that community to weather this latest challenge. Yoo said that restaurants that serve dinner can boost their profits with appetizer and alcohol sales, whereas breakfast shifts make money because they serve a lot of people fast and attract repeat customers.
Yoo said that other factors – including the introduction of congestion pricing in Manhattan last month, which he said has inhibited customers from coming in from the outer boroughs – have had a bigger impact on his business’s bottom line than egg prices so far. But like other restaurants, he has adjusted prices to keep up with inflation, about three times over the last six years.
“Each time it’s by, like, a dollar here or there. It’s not such a massive change, especially for our regulars, who come in often and know what they want,” he said. For the breakfast restaurant, the flip side of that, however, is that some faithful patrons balk at changes to long-time menu items and prices.
Kleinberg, who opened Clinton St Baking Co in 2001, said many New York restaurants had been struggling well before egg prices spiked and even before the pandemic.
“Everyone tells me it’s harder and harder to make money in the restaurant business,” he said. Some businesses cut hours or use lower-quality ingredients to deal with higher overhead, such as labor and rent. “The fear is that you’re just not going to be able to make ends meet, no matter how popular you are.”
