Eggtastrophe in San Pedro?

Editorial Intern Micah Smith assisted with this story

It’s been two weeks since the publication of Kenny Stancil’s report on Farm Action’s letter to the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on price gouging in response to the rapid rise in egg prices. Thus far, blame is being placed on rising feed prices, increased transportation costs, and labor shortages on top of the Avian Flu killing 40 million chickens. But for restaurateurs, consumers, and mainstream media outlets, the exploding price of eggs feels more like an act of God to acclimate ourselves with rather than a problem than can be fixed. 

Random Lengths News interviewed a few local restaurateurs to get their take on the problem.

Before its incarnation into a restaurant, Slavko’s Harbor Poultry Co. was a place where the chicken was slaughtered and sold to local markets and residents.

The iconic 100-year-old local chicken shop has thrived for four generations but won’t be done in by the price of eggs.

“It’s like a yoyo,” Brian Frlekin said. “Sometimes things are up, other times things are down, you just gotta stay in the game.”

Frlekin said he gets their eggs, and sometimes chicken, from a restaurant supply house, but that the price for a flat of    eggs  generally fluctuates.

Brian’s father, Jim, once explained to Random Lengths that before the advent of supermarkets in the 1960s, small mom-and-pop markets supplied most of the community’s dietary needs. Combined with the fact that new regulations made it impossible for the Poultry Co. to continue providing freshly slaughtered chickens, the business had to evolve. That next step in the evolutionary chain was the offering of ready-made food. Jim said he got worried when the supermarkets started offering ready-made food too, but it turned out Slavko’s had a better product that local residents trusted.

Jim says that the key to Slavko’s success was their ability to give the customer what they wanted. He explained that shortly after they began providing ready-made meals, they would market their product to the holidays that local San Pedro residents celebrate. They would have corned beef and cabbage in March in celebration of Lent, the traditional Italian dish, mostaccioli and the Croatian sausage, ćevapčići year round.

“When they zig, we zag,” Jim explained. 

Jim says that he may not be the brightest guy, but Slavko’s has managed to stay ahead of the curve with that philosophy.

Think Cafe restaurateurs, Chef Sonny and Carly Ramirez, who are known for their servings of breakfast favorites from the traditional ham and eggs to the eggs scrambled with smoked salmon and their variations of egg benedict. 

“Yeah, [eggs are] likely going to keep going up too. Hopefully not forever though, they just have to fix the chickens,” Carly said. “You know they killed 8,000,000 chickens, so that’s 8,000,000 eggs gone.”

Despite the rises in prices, she said customers aren’t going to go to Think Cafe and not expect to have eggs. 

On the bright side, Carly said the price of chicken has gone down.

“Chicken, which was $3 a pound before, is now $1 a pound, so you do have to weigh the good with the bad,” Carly said.