Utah bakery feeling the pain of soaring egg prices

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Egg prices have surged, impacting Salt Lake City's RubySnap bakery significantly.
Manager Michelle Brockman reports profits are affected, with egg prices up 50% from last year.
Despite challenges, RubySnap aims to maintain quality and competitiveness without raising prices.

SALT LAKE CITY — If you've been to the grocery store lately, you've likely experienced sticker shock over the price of eggs — and that's if you can get your hands on them.

The cost is taking a huge toll on local bakers who go through thousands of eggs every week.

"Imagine what we go through to make all of these cookies every day," Michelle Brockman, bakery manager at RubySnap in Salt Lake City, said.

The shelves at RubySnap are filled with sweet treats.

"You can't really have a bad day when you're making cookies," Olivia Radford, a baker at RubySnap, said.

"I love to share joy with people," Brockman said. "And that's what we give. We give joy in a cookie form."

But that joy — whether it's a sugar cookie, mango dark chocolate or any of the others — comes at a price, which has never been higher with the soaring price of eggs.

"We're using farm-fresh eggs," Brockman said. "Hundreds. And hundreds and hundreds of them."

And with prices up 50% from this time last year, profits crumble.

"Sometimes that means my boss doesn't get a paycheck, and that's the truth," Brockman said.

Brockman said the company made the tough decision to raise prices during COVID-19 but hesitates to do it again.

"We definitely have had conversations about increasing the price, but we also know everybody is struggling. We're not alone in this," Brockman said.

Across the country, egg farms were decimated by bird flu, and agriculture experts said the price of eggs is expected to climb another 20% this year.

Brockman said they will work hard to stay competitive without compromising quality.

"We'll get through it. We will," Brockman said. "We will get through it."

Brockman said the timing couldn't be worse with Valentine's Day right around the corner. But she said the best way to keep small local businesses running is to buy their products.

You can find RubySnap in downtown Salt Lake City at 770 South 300 West. It also delivers.

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.