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You’re not the only one feeling the pinch as egg prices go up. Restaurants and diners that serve a lot of eggs are too, including Waffle House, a famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) 24/7 chain with fantastic pecan waffles and short-order breakfasts.
Because of high egg prices, the chain now has an egg surcharge. Here’s the scoop.
Waffle House is now charging customers a fee of 50 cents per egg. The surcharge will get added to your bill, and it’s per egg, not per meal. So if you order two fried eggs with your hash browns, you’ll pay $1 on top of the regular price for the eggs.
Considering Waffle House sells 272 million eggs every year, that’s a whole lot of money coming into the business just from a surcharge — $136 million to be exact, over the course of an entire year.
The good news is that this egg surcharge won’t be around forever. According to the signs seen in Waffle House locations, the extra fee is only “temporary.” And in a statement to CNN, Waffle House said that it’s “continuously monitoring egg prices and will adjust or remove the surcharge as market conditions allow.”
Avian flu has been hitting farms since 2022, but the most recent resurgence in late 2024 made the situation much worse than it had been. More than 20 million egg-laying chickens died or had to be culled in the U.S. in the last quarter of 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s reducing supply dramatically and sending prices shooting up to an average of $4.15 a dozen, though many areas have prices that are even higher.
Unfortunately, experts predict the situation will get worse throughout the year, with egg prices rising 20% more. “Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re in this for a while,” said Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, to CNN. “Until we have time without a detection, unfortunately this very, very tight egg supply is going to continue.” So while Waffle House will remove the egg surcharge eventually, don’t hold out hope it’ll be anytime soon.
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