The Waffle Home proposition is fairly easy: It’s a 24/7, 365-day restaurant chain that makes the majority of its earnings by serving low-cost meals to as many individuals as potential. Yearly, it sells 85 million strips of bacon, 58 million cups of espresso, 272 million eggs, 153 million hash browns, and 124 million waffles nationally, all whereas staying inexpensive.
Waffle Home’s low costs are made potential by its no-frills eating expertise. Every Waffle Home has the identical ground plan, which is designed for buyer contact and effectivity. Slightly than chasing traits, Waffle Home depends on a way of nostalgia clients really feel upon coming into.
One other factor that makes a enterprise like this viable is its constant menu. The chain serves breakfast ’around the clock, which implies diners can reap the benefits of breakfast for dinner and eat waffles and eggs after a late night time out.
However now, with an aggressive pressure of avian flu hurting the nationwide egg provide and inflicting costs to rise, Waffle Home introduced Wednesday that it’s including a 50-cent cost per egg.
Cartoon by Clay Bennett
“The continuing egg shortage caused by HPAI (bird flu) has caused a dramatic increase in egg prices. Customers and restaurants are being forced to make difficult decisions,” Waffle Home mentioned in a press release to CNN.
Forward of the 2024 election, Republicans made inflation and rising meals prices a focus, and voters instructed pollsters they largely trusted President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris on reducing costs. However as a substitute of addressing the impacts of the chicken flu, Trump is just too busy dismantling and defunding the well being companies that might probably assist.
Regardless that the Trump administration may provide a hand to federal well being companies, his lackeys seem extra centered on blaming skyrocketing costs on former President Joe Biden.
Throughout her first press convention in late January, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned that the previous administration “directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore a lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”
However that’s solely half of the story, as Poynter famous. The method of culling chickens is a long-standing one which was in place throughout Trump’s first time period. As a result of chicken flu is deadly, it requires the federal government to cull total flocks as soon as the virus has been detected.
And whereas the chicken flu has been plaguing farmers and the egg provide since 2022, the outbreak elevated tenfold in 2024 because of the virus’s resurgence.
In accordance with the U.S. Division of Agriculture, 17.2 million egg-laying hens have been slaughtered in November and December 2024, accounting for practically half of all birds killed that yr.
As of December, the common worth per one dozen eggs was $4.15. Whereas that’s not fairly as excessive because the 2022 common, which was $4.22, costs may enhance by as a lot as 20% this yr, in line with the Division of Agriculture’s January meals worth outlook.
If solely Trump weren’t so busy instigating commerce wars, perhaps he’d have time to meet one among his precise marketing campaign guarantees: reducing the price of groceries.
Marketing campaign Motion
