- Waffle House has ended its egg surcharge. The restaurant chain has been charging an extra 50 cents per egg since February to balance the high price of eggs following an avian flu outbreak earlier this year. Waffle House serves 272 million eggs per year.
Roughly five months after implementing a 50-cent-per-egg surcharge on all orders, Waffle House is ending diners’ shell shock at the charge.
The chain has announced that the surcharge will no longer be collected. (The company reportedly quietly dropped the surcharge a month ago, but only announced the news this week.)
The extra charge started in February when egg prices surged to record highs as a result of the avian flu outbreak that forced many farmers to euthanize tens of millions of chickens. Egg prices have fallen since then, but are still 40% higher than they were a year ago, as of May.
Waffle House is one of the biggest egg-slinging restaurant chains in America, so the impact of the higher prices was felt there. The restaurant serves 272 million of them each year, followed by 153 million hashbrown orders, 124 million waffles, and 85 million strips of bacon. The egg surcharge impacted more than 1,900 Waffle House locations across 25 states.
“Rather than increasing prices across the menu, this is a temporary targeted surcharge tied to the unprecedented rise in egg prices,” Waffle House said in a statement to Fortune when the surcharge was announced.
While customers are certainly going to be happy to hear the surcharge is gone, that joy might pale compared to the relief felt by servers at Waffle House, who regularly were the target of diners’ ire.
Waffle House wasn’t alone. Denny’s also added a surcharge when eggs were hard to find.
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