Rising egg prices have these Kansas City bakeries scrambling to find ways to adapt

Any home baker making baked goods for family or friends understands the financial shock of buying eggs these days. Imagine the feeling if hundreds of eggs were required for your baking needs.

“We go through about 60 dozen eggs a week, so prices are about $110, $115 a case (15 dozen eggs), where at one time a case was less than $40. So we’re all taking a major hit,” says LaRon Williams, lead baker at M & M Bakery and Delicatessen, a decades-long staple of the East Side of Kansas City that serves sandwiches on in-house baked bread and assorted baked goods such as yeast donuts, cookies, and cheesecakes.

The price of eggs has skyrocketed in recent months, sending shock waves through the baking industry. A number of factors, including a devastating outbreak of avian flu and surging demand, has led to a nationwide egg shortage and a dramatic increase in prices that are sometimes shocking to behold.

This has left local bakeries grappling with how to address this new reality.

‘What affects us, affects the customers’

Rising egg prices have put immense pressure on local bakeries’ profit margins. Many are reluctant to raise their prices for fear of losing customers, but they are also struggling to absorb the increased cost of ingredients.

At M&M, nearly all of their baked items require the use of enriched dough, dough that has milk and eggs inside. The recipes M&M has developed over the years are what their customers have grown accustomed to and expect when they order something at their counter.

They’ve also become accustomed to the price of certain items being the same visit to visit. Changing the recipes or the prices is not an option.

“We were hoping that this would be a temporary thing, so we didn’t want to give up on a taste that we’ve had for so many years, you’re talking 40 years in business. We’re looking over some things but haven’t found the right solution yet. We’re kinda just riding it out,” Williams said.

For a small business such as M&M Bakery, the increase in such a vital ingredient has a huge impact on the bottom line that exists to keep a business in operation.

“I know friends that shut their business down because they can’t keep up [with the rising costs of eggs]. It hurts.”

A Creative Approach

The egg shortage has highlighted the vulnerability of the baking industry to supply chain disruptions. It has also shown the importance of innovation and adaptability in the face of these challenges.

At Green Dirt on Oak Street, a relatively new restaurant in downtown Kansas City, the staff has taken a pragmatic approach by switching to a simpler dough that requires the use of fewer eggs.

“When I first started, we would have about four cases of eggs on hand. We were doing three egg dishes, twice the amount of mayo. Since [the rise in eggs], we do about two cases on a delivery,” says Kendall Harris, lead baker at Green Dirt on Oak. The restaurant in the Crossroads serves baked goods and several enriched dough items on their menu.

With fewer eggs to work with, Harris and the kitchen staff at Green Dirt have pivoted to featuring more sourdough, focaccia, and milk bread, breads that require little to no eggs, for their bread items. This approach gives a more rustic feel to their menu, one that fully works with their business model of local, homegrown, and rustic foods.

Green Dirt relies on local farms for their ingredients. Often first come, first serve, these farms can be a way to save money on eggs, but they can be less reliable.

Another way Green Dirt has adapted is to “recycle” their eggs in a unique way.

Only the yolks from the eggs are used for their in-house mayonnaise. The unused egg whites are sent for bar service, where they feature a couple of cocktails that require egg whites. Whatever the bar doesn’t use, they send it back down to the kitchen to make a pavlova, which is a baked meringue. Whatever is left of the pavlova gets ground into a fine powder and used as a creative replacement for powdered sugar. This approach ensures that the restaurant uses every bit of the egg, cutting waste and getting more bang for their buck when it comes to pricey eggs.

Head chef, Oskar Arévalo, does acknowledge that this change also comes with its own challenges. “Eggs are one of those things that is very hard to go without. It’s not like, ‘Oh we’re just not serving eggs at brunch anymore.’ We make mayonnaise in-house. We have brioche, we have milk bread, we have cheesecake. You can pivot to change things, but then you’re paying to reprint menus. Yeah, it affects things,” Arévalo said.

This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM.