Rising egg prices provide business opportunity for some North Bay residents
The price of eggs is soaring, adding to the burden many Bay Area residents are already feeling with rising food costs over the last several years.
However, some locals are seeing the price spike as an opportunity.
For Leslie Citroen, the owner of Mill Valley Chickens, the spring time is always a busy time of the year. With the impacts of the bird flu on increasing egg shortages and skyrocketing egg prices, she's busier than ever.
"The phone definitely has been ringing quite a bit, just in the last one to two weeks," Citroen told CBS News Bay Area. "They're asking for the productive chickens, just because a production chicken might give you six eggs per week, while one of these heritage chickens, this little yellow one, you're lucky to get one egg from her out of the week."
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price for a dozen of eggs hit a record last month, costing $4.95. Comparatively, in December of 2024, the average price of a dozen eggs was about $4.15.
Bay Area residents are now considering the alternative of taking care of their own chickens to lay healthy eggs.
"It'll be different times of the day, we might get three. It's kind of unpredictable, so it's kind of like almost a slot machine, you walk out here and what I do have for the day and checking periodically," Golden Eye Egg co-founder and CEO Ryder Rubenstein told CBS News Bay Area.
Rubenstein, a junior in high school, founded his business a couple of weeks ago. He bought six chickens from Citroen, built a chicken run and is now operating a business out of his backyard in his Ross neighborhood.
"Bird flu typically stems from the close proximity of these chickens. By our whole model being based on extra space for the chickens. 15 times more space than even pasture-raised. We just think we're doing it the most ethical way as possible," he said.
Rubenstein shared that fitness and nutrition is his passion, and so wanted to share that with his community by becoming a local source of sustainable eggs. His business model is a subscription-based plan, where customers will pay for the year upfront and have six eggs delivered to your doorsteps every week.
Back in Mill Valley, Citroen says for those who cannot buy live chicken, it's essential to pay attention to the labels.
"Free range could be like my deck right here in a factory farm. You might have a thousand birds on here if you could imagine that, and all you have to do is have a little tiny door going to the outside, maybe the size of a shoe box and that is called free range. And it's really a meaningless term. The term you want to look right now is pasture-raised," she said.
