Some eggs in NY are less than $4, others are $11. Here's how to navigate a chaotic market.

Finding cheap eggs in New York City now feels like a full-time job.

Prices vary widely and are changing by the day amid an ongoing bird flu outbreak that has wiped out more than 23 million chickens this year alone. A dozen Mitlitsky large white eggs were selling for $9.29 at the Key Food on Avenue A in Manhattan. At Trader Joe’s, a mile-and-a-half away in SoHo, the house brand cage-free eggs were going for just $3.49 a dozen.

Shopper Jessica Lee was recently at that location, waiting for the egg section to be restocked.

“It’s just very difficult to get eggs at the moment,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy.”

A Trader Joe’s spokesperson said in a statement that the chain works to keep prices consistent for the same product across all of its locations and only changes prices when its own costs change. The company is one of several that’s been limiting customers’ egg purchases amid surging demand for affordable options.

At Key Food, a retail cooperative where each store is independently owned and operated, prices spotted on Monday varied widely between neighborhoods. A location in Kensington, Brooklyn, had a dozen eggs for $7.49. The Park Slope location was selling a dozen for $10.29. And the store in Port Richmond on Staten Island was selling a dozen for $8.99.

Roy Diaz, a manager at the Key Food in the Bronx's Mount Hope neighborhood, where an 18-pack of eggs sold for $6.49, said this is the most volatile situation he’s seen over 25 years in business.

“It’s such a mess,” Diaz said. “At this point we take any brand, any egg we can get a hold of.”

The reasons for the huge price swings are as varied as the prices themselves — including simple supply and demand, how much leeway suppliers and retailers have to set prices, whether stores get their eggs from big suppliers or smaller local operations, and how much stock stores had on hand before prices surged.

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At the Yonkers location of Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain with eight locations around the tristate area, an 18-pack of conventional eggs went for $12.99 on Friday, while premium organic eggs were less than half that price, at $5.99 for an 18-pack.

That’s because the outbreak has largely affected the conventional “caged” egg Pennsylvania farms that supply them, according to store director Andrew Hollis, grandson of founder Stew Leonard Sr.

Three-quarters of the egg-laying chickens lost to the outbreak in 2025 have been conventional “caged” production chickens, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“The cage-free and pasture-raised organic eggs, they’re not having that issue,” Hollis said. “Essentially it’s better eggs for a lot cheaper.”

And high-end retailers, paradoxically, may sometimes have cheaper eggs than other stores nearby. At Luna Brothers Fruit Plaza, a low-cost grocery stand inside the Lower East Side’s Essex Market, a dozen Nelms jumbo white eggs went for $11.49 over the weekend, while at Union Market a few blocks away, Fingerlakes Farms extra-large brown eggs sold for $4.69 a dozen.

A spokesperson for Union Market said the upscale chain, which has six locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan, was able to maintain low prices in recent weeks because it purchased a large stock of eggs before the current shortage spiked wholesale prices. Smaller bodegas and stands without warehouse space need to purchase their eggs more often, and are more exposed to rapidly changing wholesale prices, industry experts say.

Union Market prices its eggs at a consistent markup over what it pays to purchase them, the spokesperson said, adding that the sticker price might soon increase. The price that retailers in New York pay for a dozen large, Grade A white eggs has jumped 38% since the beginning of the year, according to USDA data.

It’s such a mess. At this point we take any brand, any egg we can get a hold of.

Roy Diaz, manager of the Key Food in Mount Hope in the Bronx

Like many stores around the city, Union Market has begun limiting purchases to supply as many customers as possible. On Tuesday morning, the grocer’s Lower East Side location was cleaned out of its usual inventory and selling only Brey’s Egg Farm extra-large white eggs for $10.69 a dozen.

Daniel Brey, a third-generation farmer whose operation outside Bethel, New York, produces 228,000 eggs a day, said he’s been fielding multiple calls about egg prices every day, from both long-term customers as well as new buyers like Union Market.

“Everybody’s price-shopping,” Brey said. “They don’t want to jump the gun if they can get a better deal.”

Sullivan County was one of the nation's top egg suppliers when Brey’s father ran the farm in the 1970s, but regional production has largely moved to Pennsylvania, Brey said, calling his operation “the only egg farm left from here to New York City.”

Geography is one reason his farm has ridden out the current storm, Brey said – he’s largely outside the path of the migratory snow geese that are one of the primary vectors for the current outbreak.

“We’re somewhat fortunate so far,” Brey said. “You got to be really really careful who comes and goes on the farm, make sure everything is safe.”

Jada Thompson, an associate professor at the University of Arkansas who specializes in the economics of the poultry industry, said that while bird flu can affect chickens anywhere, that migratory bird pattern has hit the Midwest especially hard.

Pennsylvania, which supplies much of the Mid-Atlantic, has lost some 2.3 million birds in the last 30 days, according to the USDA. Thompson said that can affect regional prices.

Everybody’s price-shopping. They don’t want to jump the gun if they can get a better deal.

Daniel Brey, a farmer near Bethel, New York

The United States lost some 40 million birds when the current outbreak started in 2020, Thompson said. With more than 23 million birds lost this year already, “it’s going to be a pretty substantial year,” she said.

Replacing lost birds takes time, Thompson said – about six months to go from “I need a new chicken” to that chicken laying an egg.

Andrew Hollis of Stew Leonard’s said that tracks with what he’s heard from his suppliers, who are seeking to rebuild their flocks.

For now, New Yorkers can get a little bit of a leg up by knowing their local retailers’ patterns. Hollis said his store receives its egg delivery on Wednesdays, and that shoppers who want to catch the best prices should come in between then and the weekend, when the cheaper options start to sell out until the next shipment.

“Basically ‘just buckle your seatbelt’ is what we’ve been told,” Hollis said. “It’s going to be several months before prices start coming back to reality.”