Karen Huebner did not want to raise the price of omelets.

Even as she was paying more for eggs week after week, she held prices steady on egg dishes at the Hot Grillz Diner, the small restaurant her family owns in Walton Hills, Ohio, about 15 miles southeast of Cleveland.

But this week, the cost of her order of eggs jumped to nearly $1,000, up from $300 just a few weeks ago.

“I said I wasn’t going to do it, but this is crushing me,” Huebner said. “My loyal customers would rather pay 50 cents more an egg right now than to see these doors close because I can’t pay my rent.”

As the wholesale price of eggs — what retailers and restaurants pay — hit new highs of $8.11 a dozen, breakfast specials at some restaurants are now more expensive.

Last week, Waffle House said it would add a temporary surcharge of 50 cents for each egg used in dishes. Across the country, smaller restaurant chains and bakeries that use a lot of eggs are either bumping prices up or adding temporary surcharges, trying to pass along some of the expense to inflation-weary customers.

“If you raise prices too much, you risk losing the customers,” said Ed Powers, the director of operations at Broken Yolk Cafe, a chain of 40 restaurants, largely in the West, where 70% of the items on the menu require eggs. The company has cut costs where it can, but it is now considering increasing the prices of its egg dishes. “What’s a fair price for an omelet?”

Making scrambled eggs at home isn’t much cheaper these days either. Shoppers at many grocery stores, including Costco and Trader Joe’s, are finding sparsely filled shelves and signs limiting how many cartons of eggs they can buy at a time.

Those lucky enough to find eggs to buy are paying significantly more for them.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that grocery prices, which had been relatively flat in late 2023 and early 2024, climbed 1.9% in January on a yearly basis, largely because of egg prices. The price of eggs to consumers has jumped 15.2% over the past four weeks. Since last year, egg prices are up 53%.

Nationally, a dozen Grade A eggs were $4.95 in January, up from $2.52 a year ago, according to FRED, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis economic database. (Grocery stores typically price products like milk and eggs as “loss leaders,” meaning they are sold for less than the price that stores pay, to entice customers into a store.)

How much higher prices will go and how long they will last is hard to predict.

While egg prices have been volatile, partly because of inflation, much of the recent spike in prices is attributed to the avian influenza caused by the H5N1 virus. When a farm has a confirmed case of the virus, the whole flock needs to be slaughtered to contain the spread. That has resulted in more than 45 million chickens — roughly 15% of the nation’s egg- laying population — being killed in the past four months to prevent the spread of the disease, according to Karyn Rispoli, the egg managing editor at Expana, which tracks the prices of eggs.

Egg analysts say two things need to happen for egg prices to moderate: Confirmed cases of bird flu have to subside or end, giving egg-laying operations a chance to rebuild their flocks, and consumers need to curb their hoarding tendencies.