This week marks five years since the U.S. plunged into the depths of the COVID pandemic. Though the virus is still around, and experts continue to urge people to get vaccinated against it, life has mostly returned to normal. We can gather and hug, go mask-free, and walk into a store without waiting in socially-distanced lines. But to that last point, it looks like some Costco shoppers are once again queueing up for groceries, this time due to the egg shortage impacting the nation.
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The egg shortage continues to worsen.
Unfortunately, we aren’t yet seeing a glimmer of hope in the national egg shortage since bird flu isn’t under control.
As Best Life reported last month: “Between November and January alone, 30 million chickens—’roughly 10 percent of the nation’s egg-laying population’—were killed to prevent the spread of bird flu, according to a recent report by The New York Times.”
“It could take months before the supply of egg-laying chickens returns to the normal level of around 318 million, roughly the equivalent of one chicken per person,” they explained.
Thus, egg prices hit a record average high of $4.95 in mid-February, according to the Associated Press, which points out that egg prices normally spike around Easter.
The Wall Street Journal adds that, per the Labor Department, “Grocers and food distributors are paying about $8 a dozen at wholesale, which makes selling them often a money-loser.”
And despite the Trump administration’s $1 billion five-point plan to fight bird flu and bring egg costs down (which includes importing eggs), industry experts say that relief isn’t on the horizon.
“I don’t think the five-point plan is going to do anything in the next three, four months,” Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, told Barron’s. “We’re talking about a year or longer for the breeding cycle.”
Grocery stores have implemented egg limits.
The current situation has forced most grocery stores to limit the number of cartons of eggs shoppers can buy. These include:
- Trader Joe’s: 1 dozen eggs per customer
- Kroger (some locations): 2 dozen eggs per shopping trip
- Whole Foods (some locations): 3 one-dozen cartons
- Aldi (some locations): 2 dozen eggs
- Sam’s Club: 2 dozen eggs
- Costco: 3 cartons
Costco’s egg limits have caused long lines—and shoppers aren’t happy.
Though Costco has an egg limit of 3 cartons per customer, it’s much more favorable than other grocery stores since the warehouse club typically sells its eggs in two- or four-dozen cartons. And at some Costco locations, that’s caused lines to wrap around the block just to enter the store.
A Costco member in Los Angeles titled a Reddit thread, “Eggs are the new toilet paper,” accompanying it with a photo of the line.
“The line to get into the store wrapped up the entire store. Eggs were sold out in 5 minutes so people resorted to stealing eggs from people’s carts or hoarding them. Flashbacks of COVID for sure,” they wrote.
from LosAngeles
Another Reddit thread shows a video of the lines inside the store to check out.
In response to someone asking why people don’t just stop buying eggs for a while, a Redditor said, “I think some people are shopping on behalf of restaurants. Places like bakeries really need eggs to function.” Someone else agreed: “Costco is a wholesaler. Restaurants, delis, bakeries need them to stay open.”
On TikTok, @iluvmariana shared a video of the lines inside and outside of the Norwalk, California Costco. She arrived at 9:50 a.m., 10 minutes before the store opened, and by the time she got to the eggs, the variety she wanted was already gone.
@iluvmariana we got in line at 9:50! and the eggs we wanted were already gone😭
At the San Bernardino, California Costco, shoppers who wanted eggs had to get in a line, at the end of which a store employee handed out egg cartons, according to TikToker @erriccaa09.
@erriccaa09 Costco Eggs 🥚 #costco #costcofinds #costcotiktok #costcoeggs #eggs #fontana #sanbernardino
At TikToker @_thicctoc’s Costco store, people also lined up early to get their eggs. Her video shows a Costco employee making an announcement along the checkout line that if anyone planned to buy more than three cartons of eggs, they’d need more than one membership.
@_thicctoc Randomly went to Costco today since we were low on eggs. I guess everyone had the same idea to go to Costco early today to go egg hunting 🤣 Feels like we’re back to the pandemic times Lol #foryoupage #costco #eggs ##CapCut
