In a welcome sign that sky-high egg prices are coming home to roost, Waffle House is dropping its 50 cent per egg surcharge.
Government price-checkers monitor prices around the country every month to compile the government’s cost-of-living index. Staffing shortages have recently forced the Labor Department to scale back that data gathering.
“Egg-cellent news,” the chain announced Tuesday in a social media post. “The egg surcharge is officially off the menu. Thanks for understanding.”
Waffle House had added the surcharge in February as an outbreak of avian flu forced the culling of tens of millions of egg-laying chickens, sending prices to record highs. Since then, both wholesale and retail prices have begun to normalize, although retail egg prices in May were still up more than 40% from a year ago.
I can’t say that lede actually makes sense. “Coming home to roost” does not idiomatically mean what is clearly intended here. Were this a story about Waffle House going out of business because of the egg surcharge, then, by all means, go with that.
It isn’t, so …
A local diner chain had the same surcharge for a while and dropped it last month. I’m just glad they didn’t print new menus and make it permanent in either case.
Oh, thank goodness bird flu is no longer jacking up those prices! Must have died down. Oh.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/data-map-commercial.html