Omeletteflation

The Price That Never Came Back Down

I walked into my favorite diner last weekend and ordered an omelette. The price? A whopping $20. I didn't flinch; it's been that way for a while now. But as I sipped my coffee, I glanced at the newspaper on the counter and saw eggs were back to 99 cents a dozen – the same week! It was then that I started thinking about this strange phenomenon: the input crashed but the plate stayed high.

The Egg Round-Trip

For what felt like an eternity, eggs were hovering around $2 a dozen. Then came the avian flu, and prices skyrocketed to $8 for a long stretch. But after the scare passed, they settled back down to around $6 – still more than double their pre-spike price. And just last week, I saw them for 99 cents a dozen at my local market. It's as if the market had a collective memory loss: eggs went from super cheap to ridiculously expensive and back again.

The Omelette That Didn't Follow

But what about the restaurant omelette? After doubling in price from around $10 to $20, it stayed put – even now that eggs are back to their old price. A $20 omelette is essentially a "high-end ticket," nearly on par with a steak sandwich. For ingredients like eggs and a pan, this seems absurd.

The Price Sticky-Up

Why do menu prices behave so strangely? One reason is that they're set once, and rarely re-printed downward – unlike a hardware shelf tag at Home Depot, which will reflect price drops in real-time. This is partly due to psychology: owners are hesitant to drop prices, as it implies the previous hike was unjustified. But there's more to it than that.

Beyond Eggs: The $25 Lemon-Ginger Shot

Take another example: a lemon-ginger shot for $25 – a price so out of whack that it defies explanation. Cheap ingredients like lemons and ginger should cost pennies, not dollars. Yet the price remains stuck at an absurdly high level.

The Hardware Contrast

Compare this to hardware prices, which can actually drop in real-time. During the 2021 shortage, screws, metal, and lumber spiked – but when supply chain issues resolved themselves, prices went back down with them. Food menus don't behave like this; a $20 omelette is not a thermometer that reacts to price fluctuations.

The Record Shows

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index (CPI), US food-away-from-home prices have been rising sharply since 2020 – a trend that shows no signs of slowing down. Egg wholesale prices, as documented by various outlets, followed a similar path: up during the avian flu scare and back down when it passed. The direction is clear, but the extent of these price increases remains a nuanced discussion.

Honest Takeaway

The input came back down – eggs are cheap again – but the plate never did. A menu price is a decision, not a thermometer that reacts to market forces. This phenomenon speaks to a more fundamental issue: our willingness to pay for convenience and perceived value. In an era where data and prices are readily available, it's surprising how little they influence our purchasing decisions.

I finished my $20 omelette and walked out of the diner, pondering this paradox – the price that never came back down.