HOUSTON—With the massive egg recall, wholesale egg prices could increase by up to 40 percent – and that could lead to shell shock on other foods, leaving some consumers feeling sick to their stomachs.
At Three Brothers Bakery in southwest Houston – as in bakeries all over the country – eggs are a staple in most of their products.
In a way, eggs have been the glue that’s held Three Brothers Bakery together in its 61 years of business.
So when salmonella concerns triggered the massive national recall of more than a half billion eggs, the first thing Three Brothers’ Bobby Jucker did was call his vendor.
"I called my vender up – ‘What’s going on with the prices of eggs? Let’s lock in some stuff for the next three or four weeks.’ And we did," Jucker said.
But what happens when that three- to four-week supply dwindles?
The egg supply is already lower in the summer, because heat affects the hens.
That makes the impact of the recall all the more substantial.
"Prices always go up when there’s a food recall – especially of this magnitude. So we’re concerned about that," Thomas Baker of Three Brothers Bakery said.
"It’s something we really have a hard time passing on to our customer, and we don’t want to do that. We just basically eat it," Jucker said.
All the while, they’ll be hoping and waiting for those prices to come back down.
How long that takes largely depends on how quickly the egg farms that have been idled by the recall return to production.
