Big Take: What a Bacon, Egg and Cheese Teaches Us About the Economy

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Sarah Holder (0:08)

Hi, good morning.

Michael Herzer (0:09)

Hello, how are you?

Sarah Holder (0:11)

For the last few years, whenever I've needed a little extra morning sustenance, I visited a food cart outside the Bloomberg office. Could I have a egg and cheese sandwich, extra ketchup, salt and pepper, please?

Brian Moskajury (0:24)

Egg and cheese is $5.

Sarah Holder (0:28)

It used to be $3.50.

Michael Herzer (0:30)

For the eggs, it's expensive.

Ilena Peng (0:31)

The sandwich will go up.

Sarah Holder (0:33)

It must have been a while since I stopped by the cart, because Karen Hidalgo and her coworker, Francisco, told me two months ago they had to raise prices. Their egg and cheese sandwich on a roll went from $3.50 to $5, and their bacon egg and cheese has reached $6. Add in the cost of a cup of coffee and a tip, and my once reliably cheap breakfast just ran me $7. It's not just my beloved breakfast cart. Bloomberg actually tracks the price of the key ingredients in a bacon egg and cheese, plus a cup of coffee, on a special bacon egg and cheese index. It's updated every month using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or the BLS. And this year, the index has reached record highs.

Ilena Peng (1:21)

Our breakfast foods are very consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsize indicators of inflation.

Sarah Holder (1:30)

Ilena Peng covers agriculture and commodities for Bloomberg.

Ilena Peng (1:34)

Even though economists really like to look at the rate of inflation, as a consumer, you tend to think, oh, my coffee cost this much today, and my coffee used to cost that much five years ago.

Sarah Holder (1:45)

In March 2019, the commodities that make up an average BEC plus a coffee cost almost $1.90. If you adjusted for inflation, that means the meal should cost nearly $2.40 today. But as of March 2025, it topped $3, $3.23 to be exact. So the story of why these foods have gotten so expensive isn't just about inflation. It's also about supply and demand.

Peter Longo (2:12)

When my customers complained to me recently, oh, the price of coffee, gouging, you're gouging.

Sarah Holder (2:17)

Global weather patterns and disease.

Brian Moskajury (2:20)

Experienced veterans would tell me like, young man, we've seen everything that could possibly happen in the egg market.

Sarah Holder (2:26)

Land wars and trade wars.

Pat Clements (2:28)

We're used to handling the natural barriers. The man-made ones, we kind of struggle with them, you know?

Sarah Holder (2:33)

The winds of consumers and the complexities of financial markets. Now, as Trump's sweeping tariff orders send shockwaves through the global economy and put new pressures on domestic commodities markets, we wanted to look closer at one sandwich that helps explain it all. Today on the show, we talked to people up and down the bacon, egg, and cheese supply chain, from a Kentucky wheat farmer, to a VP at an egg brokerage, to a coffee roaster in lower Manhattan. And along the way, Bloomberg's expert commodities reporters helped us make sense of how this sandwich got so expensive and what it says about the American economy, tariffs, inflation, and more. This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.

If you had to pick one ingredient to blame for the rising costs of a breakfast sandwich, it would probably be eggs.

Brian Moskajury (3:35)

Eggs have a weird pulse on the economy.

Sarah Holder (3:39)

Brian Moskajury has worked in the egg industry for over a decade. He's currently a vice president at an egg brokerage called Eggs Unlimited. It also helps farms distribute their eggs to retail customers.

Brian Moskajury (3:51)

When I got into the egg industry, my mom said, like, somehow you belonged in this industry. You just always loved eggs.

Sarah Holder (3:57)

Right now is a rough time to be an egg lover. As anyone who's been to the grocery store recently knows, the price of eggs has been uncomfortably high. The most recent data we have shows that consumer prices in March hit a new record, over $6.20 a dozen, double what eggs cost a year ago. Most people know or think they know what's behind that high price. Bird flu, since late last year, a new wave of avian influenza has been tearing through American egg farms, killing off tons of egg laying hens.

Brian Moskajury (4:32)

50 million of 312 million since the start of October. It's just an unprecedented supply loss, and those prices have been passed along to the consumer.

Sarah Holder (4:42)

But there may have been other dynamics pushing up the price of eggs. The Department of Justice has opened a probe to investigate potential price fixing by egg sellers, and consumer reactions also had an impact.