Eggspensive

https://eggspensive.net/

by voisin • 3 years ago

242 266 3 years ago

eggspensive.net

cheapliquor• 3 years ago

This is neat

Go figure the cheapest eggs in the country are in Ohio though lol

hammock6• 3 years ago

Yes, $1.82 in the three Ohio Walmarts surrounding East Palestine

linhns• 3 years ago

Sad to say but understandable.

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

Looks like Washington, DC, St. Louis, and the area to the east of San Francisco are "red zones" for high egg prices for some reason.

changoplatanero• 3 years ago

I wonder if those regions have some kind of regulations that limit supply

swatcoder3• 3 years ago

It’s a really neat visualization, but you can’t take the data to mean much. It’s only showing the price of store brand eggs at Wal-mart, and each store/region would have a pricing strategy that accounts for a ton of factors beyond supply cost (with or without regulation).

To know if eggs in general are more or less expensive in any region, or if people spend more/less on them, etc you’d need much more sophisticated data than one might compile for a hobby project like this.

BurningFrog2• 3 years ago

California has a new law about humane conditions for chickens that has closed many egg producers.

pavon• 3 years ago

Really interesting how different Walmarts nearby by in Kansas vary by 2x, from some of the lowest prices in the country to some of the highest.

bluedino• 3 years ago

The low prices likely are not real

josefin_h• 3 years ago

Don't you think this whole thing is a bit eggsaggerative? Couldn't resist...

sanggonlee• 3 years ago

This is cool! Whenever I see these kinds of apps though, I wonder where do you get the data? Is there a public API for all the grocery products in the US or something?

jaqalopes• 3 years ago

It is for Walmarts only per the info page. There must be a way to scrape that from their online grocery shopping website even without an api.

jonathanstrange• 3 years ago

Naive as I am (& not living in the US), I've always thought these supermarket chains have uniform pricing and that's one reason why they're so popular.

swatcoder3• 3 years ago

This is just one brand of eggs from one store (see info pop out). Since that store has local online ordering that matches store price, you could probably scrape it as a good practice exercise in building scrapers.

davidkuennen• 3 years ago

I'm from Germany and in New York right now. Damn is everything expensive here. And everyone running around with a 10+$ Starbucks coffee all the time.

Edit: probably not a fair comparison though since I come from the countryside in Germany where everything's generally cheaper than in the cities.

samstave6• 3 years ago

May you please give some price comparisons for fairly similar items youll find in germany vs us (grocery or otherwise) - lets not talk about healthcare and bribing politicians :-)

Since I am "posting too fast (thanks @Dang), Ill post my replies in this edit:

@StuporGlue ;

>"Yeah, almost all of those prices are lower than in the US....

I think a gallon of milk is about $4.99 or $5.99 (usually ~$1+ higher if we are picking 'organic' (which is a shady subject in-&-of itself)"

@SamHuk ;

frakenstein of candy-floss, tiramisu, and ice-cream sundae <-- this sounds good except it being a 'morning coffee drink'

---

@QuaffaPint ;

What/where/how can we track "the cost of doing business" based on zipcodes etc. I find it really odd that california had a lot of oil refineries for gas vs mid-country-states, so proximity to gas (thus delivery) was cheaper - yet has the highest prices... because we have 45 million people in the state to grift off, so its not logistics that cause price hikes. But thats what they want you to believe.

-----

pjerem• 3 years ago

In France (but I think german prices are more or or less the same), a coffee at Starbucks is between 3€ to 4,90€. And it’s expensive for what it is. A good coffee at any random place is between 1,50€ to 3€ depending on the size. Those prices are service and all taxes included.

Insanity• 3 years ago

I can provide a data point for Belgium at least. Starbucks specifically is about equally expensive in EUR, it's about 6EUR. But, you don't frequently see people walking around with Starbucks in Belgium and they aren't on every corner (rarely see them, really).

That said, Rent alone is significantly different, where the rent alone in NY can be the entire monthly salary for someone in EU. (Basing myself on data from Toronto, but I gather that NY is more expensive to rent).

dbspin3• 3 years ago

Not the person you're asking, but I just moved from Germany having lived in Berlin for two years. I noticed prices seem to vary quite a bit, even within the same supermarket chain and city, depending on the neighbourhood. I assume they run some kind of franchise model for most of the big chains. But you can get a rough idea of pricing below. Edeka would be a fairly standard chain (there are a bunch of supermarkets in Berlin from FrischeParadies on the ultra high end, to Aldi Nord and Netto on low end).

Edeka - https://e-center-knauer.edeka-shops.de/en/all-products/chill...

glanzwulf• 3 years ago

Not op, but I'm in Berlin and a couple of days ago I went to buy some eggs and it was ten for 2.99EUR - 3.18USD.

stuporglue• 3 years ago

I'm in a suburb of Cologne right now. Looking on PicNic, an online grocery delivery service I see:

Medium Eggs: €2.29 for a 10 pack (US$2.92/dozen) Whole HTT: (heat treated) box milk: €1.15/liter (US$4.46/gallon) Gala Apples: €2.35/kilo (US$1.09/pound) Unsalted Butter: €7.96/kg (US$3.69/pound)

I usually save a little bit by going to Aldi or another discount grocery, but this is very close to shelf price for the non-discount grocery stores.

quickthrowman• 3 years ago

I find it really odd that california had a lot of oil refineries for gas vs mid-country-states, so proximity to gas (thus delivery) was cheaper - yet has the highest prices... because we have 45 million people in the state to grift off, so its not logistics that cause price hikes. But thats what they want you to believe.

California has a specific gasoline formulation that is different than every other state. That’s why gas costs more in CA, in addition to the state gasoline taxes.

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/gasoline

em500• 3 years ago

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

quaffapint• 3 years ago

Cost of living definitely varies in the US. New York being on the higher end.

samhuk• 3 years ago

I've never quite related to the appeal.

My pet (slightly tin-foil hat) theory is that the draws to this kind of behavior is:

A) It's a status symbol of being able to afford a frequent 9.80$ expenditure on something as basic as frappé (or 5 for a normal coffee).

B) The typical sugar content of drinks (that have sugar/syrups in them) from places like Starbucks is addictive, like how fast-food chains add excessive sugar and fat their products (yes, there is a relatively high amount of sugar in their bread).

I really enjoy the occasional nice coffee with a friend or two, but a 9.80$ Starbucks frappé? To me, they often taste and look like some frakenstein of candy-floss, tiramisu, and ice-cream sundae.

One thing I would like to have some data on is what are frequent Starbucks customers drinking? Are the frequent customers predominantly ordering the addictive items, or is there no correlation?

nostrademons• 3 years ago

Wasn't there a movie where a coffee exec sardonically talks about plying customers with "legal addictive stimulants"?

Caffeine is addictive. There are a lot of caffeine addicts in the U.S. Starbucks sells a menu full of caffeine. That's why people buy from them.

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

Yes the exchange rate is not in your favor right now. I spent time in Germany 12 years ago and it was so expensive for me as it was around $1.50/Euro. Recent trips have been nice and cheap. I'm sure it will swing back eventually.

New York is always expensive though.

Tagbert2• 3 years ago

A Starbucks coffee is not $10. A large, handmade dessert like a Frappuccino is $10. A basic cup of coffee is about $3.

Sorry to jump on you but people frequently post complaints about Starbucks coffee being super expensive but then using the price of the most expensive item on their menu that is not a normal coffee.

colecut• 3 years ago

My observation is that far, far less than half of people at starbucks order "normal coffee"

brk2• 3 years ago

A Venti (large) flavored latte is $6.15 with tax at my local store in Florida (just checked). Prices in NY are usually a bit higher. Wouldn't be surprised to see it for $7+ there. I agree it's probably not most people with $10 coffees, but given the choices in NY, if it is truly a Starbucks cup, the person is likely not going there for a basic $3 coffee (which is $3.16 with tax here, and probably $4 in NYC).

goosedragons• 3 years ago

How many people are getting the basic cup of coffee though? Usually when I go the people ahead of me are getting something fancier than a drip coffee. Not necessarily a $10 Frappuccino but a $7 latte with oat milk.

tempsy4• 3 years ago

I went to the Starbucks Reserve in NYC and got a coffee thinking it’d be a regular drip and it ended up being $8-$9

samstave6• 3 years ago

In the late 70s/early 80s - my grandmother (from seattle, prominent family) received a letter asking for an investment in a company for 10%.

She threw the letter away saying "nobody's ever going to drink that much coffee.

The letter was from Starbucks.

Sad investment face.

adolph• 3 years ago

A basic cup of coffee is about $3.

Outside the anchor effect of comparing it to a $10 cup of fructose, $3 is an outrageous cost for a cup of coffee.

The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias whereby an individual's decisions are influenced by a particular reference point or 'anchor'. Both numeric and non-numeric anchoring have been reported in research. In numeric anchoring, once the value of the anchor is set, subsequent arguments, estimates, etc. made by an individual may change from what they would have otherwise been without the anchor. For example, an individual may be more likely to purchase a car if it is placed alongside a more expensive model (the anchor).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)

nine_k• 3 years ago

NYC is full of contrasts. Where I used to work in downtown Manhattan, there were 3 pizza places near the office, with prices ranging from $4-5 per slice in an upscale place with fancy pizza, to $0.99 for a reasonably tasty slice half a block away.

Same applies to most goods. You can get pretty cheap offerings if you know where to look; you can have expensive and fancy stuff if you are ready to afford it.

keiferski• 3 years ago

This is one of the unique and great things about NYC that is far less true in Paris, London, and other global cities: a variety of cheap, good food that is available nearly everywhere. The only other place I've been with similar options was Tokyo.

mattw2121• 3 years ago

Now you've given me something to ponder on the entire day -- why do the Walmarts within 10 miles of me have different prices? Some at $3.23 and others at $2.42. A 28% difference. Do other products have this same price difference? Are some stores consistently priced lower and should I shop at those instead of the one I go to?

blamazon• 3 years ago

Definitely other products at Walmart vary this way, I notice it as a frequent traveler across the US, I think practically all SKUs are fair game. Dehydrated camping meals are one thing I frequently take advantage of when I'm traveling and can grab them for lower price, sometimes up to 50% lower than my 'home' Walmarts.

Interesting to ponder where Bentonville area stores fall on this continuum. (Headquarters of Walmart in a small town in Arkansas) Anyone have anecdata?

adoxyz• 3 years ago

I don't think it's specific to walmart, I've noticed that prices in supermarkets (Target, Walmart, etc.) located in lower priced neighborhoods tend to be lower than those in higher priced neighborhoods. The same item, same brand, same everything, but price difference can be from 10-30% different, sometimes more.

smolder• 3 years ago

Yeah, I think it's tied to the costs of running a particular store, and maybe other factors, like local competition. Higher property taxes will generally mean more markup.

bombcar10• 3 years ago

Stores have to make their money to survive, and a grocery store (the side of Walmart we're interested in here) has to deal with nationally advertised prices on a huge portion of their product base, so they adjust prices on the other side to compensate.

What has been pissing me off of late is that Walmart and Target will have shelf prices that are higher than online-for-in-store-pickup. You can get them to price match it but @#$@# annoying.

mey• 3 years ago

You can also do this with fast food restaurants. A great example near me is a Taco Bell that doesn't have a drive through but is surrounded by a bunch of apartments where the nearby locations that do have drive up windows are cheaper.

I would be curious to know the wealth gap between those two areas, but my gut would assume the more expensive eggs are at the poorer Walmart. Captive audience with less options. It's expensive to be poor. (Like that Taco Bell example)

hammock6• 3 years ago

The variability here inside of single cities (look at Norfolk, VA for example - and remember this is just Walmart, not Walmart vs high-end grocery etc) is really highlighting to me that we need something to upset grocery delivery to either a) make it easier to order specific items from different locations with the best price or b) induce more perfect price competition between neighboring grocery retailers

swatcoder3• 3 years ago

Alternately: some neighborhoods are less price sensitive and there’s not really a problem.

The positive flip side is that the “low” prices in a given region are probably lower than they would be if the stores had more efficient competition, and that’s to the benefit of people who are price sensitive.

babypuncher3• 3 years ago

Eggs in my neighborhood went from $2.50/dozen to $4/dozen. I didn't even notice because that is still insanely cheap for how much food is in a dozen eggs, and I don't actually use them very often.

Finding out that a different grocery story has them for a little less money would not change my shopping habits.

hammock6• 3 years ago

This is a good take. I take it you understand that there is deadweight loss in the system you describe, though

zeroonetwothree• 3 years ago

With the obsession over egg prices you’d think everyone is eating two dozen per day or something.

hammock6• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

mc32• 3 years ago

Lots of things have eggs as an ingredient, from breakfasts, to breads, pastries, ramens and pastas.

0xcde4c3db• 3 years ago

I doubt this is the main explanation, because liquid egg product prices don't necessarily track whole egg prices. I don't know where to look up the current prices for "breaker eggs", but the supply chains are remarkably bifurcated, and even if e.g. the same bird flu outbreak affected both, the effects might evolve differently across time and location.

matwood3• 3 years ago

I go through ~18 eggs/week. I already bought better eggs though, so the price increases have not been as noticeable.

Something I will notice is when my local grocery stops selling chicken breasts for $1.99/pound. I'm surprised they haven't upped the price every time I'm in there.

mrguyorama3• 3 years ago

I assume the price is low because they are culling herds

algoatecorn5• 3 years ago

Yea seriously. The price increase is inconvenient, but hardly relevant in terms of calories/$.

I eat 5-6 eggs each morning with some potatoes (my blood work is great btw, so take it easy armchair dietitians). Dietary cholesterol isn't what most people think. I digress.

But that means my at-home breakfast went from:

(5 eggs * $0.2) + (1 red potato * $0.20) = $1.20

(5 eggs * $0.5) + (1 red potato * $0.20 = $2.70

I'll survive.

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

Your strange breakfast has increased in price by 150%. If this were happening across meals, that would mean that a family who formerly spent $400 a month on groceries is now spending $1000 a month on groceries.

edit: assuming a total 20% tax rate and a $15 minimum wage, that $600 represents 50 additional hours of work a month.

4gotunameagain2• 3 years ago

How do you cook the potato ? Always interested in alternative (for me) breakfasts !

gnopgnip• 3 years ago

Potato prices have gone up substantially as well. Grocery stores are advertising $1 a pound as a sale price

opportune3• 3 years ago

You’re spending $500/year more on breakfast. That’s nothing to sneeze at, especially for people on tight budgets

29083011397778• 3 years ago

Are you not? When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large. And now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs (so I'm roughly the size of a barn).

bombcar10• 3 years ago

A barn? Should be a barge.

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

If you have a family then there's a good chance you go through them really fast. Imagine making 2-egg omelets for a family of 4. That's 8 eggs right there. Then you bake something with the kids in the afternoon and that's 8 eggs. Then you decide to make pasta for a change and that's 8 more eggs. It's not that difficult to go through a lot of eggs and why places like Costco sell eggs in 2-dozen quantities as well.

It's not difficult to go through 4 dozen a week and at $5 more per dozen that's $20/week and $80/month more for eggs. That starts to hit a lot of people's budgets.

mrguyorama3• 3 years ago

I've literally just not purchased a single egg since this started. I'll live. Turns out one can go a substantially long time without eating a very specific single food item.

Companies that bulk buy eggs to put into their own products don't seem to be getting as gouged as the normal consumer, so it hasn't affected my grocery shopping much.

In fact I've benefited quite a bit from this. Chicken is pretty cheap right now.

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

As a protein they are a unique combination of nutritious, consistent, versatile, easy to cook, and a long refrigerated shelf life.

The fact that you replaced them in your diet doesn't make them easy to replace in all diets.

ravenstine2• 3 years ago

I think there's something a bit misleading about these prices.

This is reporting prices of $2.76 per dozen at a Wallmart near me. I happened to visit that store yesterday and I know damn well there were no eggs being sold at even remotely close to that low price.

The Eggspensive site seems to be picking up on this dozen eggs, which happens to be not available at this or any other store in the region. They also are not available to purchase online. The site says they can be shipped in 3 days but it doesn't give me an add-to-cart button.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Large-White-Eggs-12-C...

I don't know how it's scraping prices, but it should discriminate as to whether eggs at a price are even available.

EDIT: Actually, those exact eggs seem responsible for making most of Southern California appear to have insanely cheap eggs. Outside of getting lucky, this is almost certainly not the case. Go to any grocery store in SoCal and you'll primarily see eggs between $5 and $8, if not exclusively.

Nicely made site, though! Keep up the good work.

samstave6• 3 years ago

What we really need is a digital copy of all our purchasing receipts via the following:

An app which scans a QR code printed on receipts which leads to a direct json/table of the items purchased, location purchased, date, price paid.

NO PERSONAL DATA - just the item, store name & location, price, date, tax %.

People can CHOOSE to scan their receipt and have that data slurped into the app and uploaded to a national DB for price index.

sans QR system integrated to the sales we just need an OCR capable AI APP that you take a pic of the receipt and it parses it and tracks the prices.

An additional feature is just snapping pics of price tags into the app and it parses them, their barcodes, prices, location, etc...

Same as the Gas Price app-ish, but for any receipt as the header of every receipt has all the business information and a line item of price for purchases.

It would be great if we could require all sales to provide a QR code of every receipt which provides a json/table of the above (anon) data...

because I keep a running tally in my head for things that I buy and their prices.

At the beginning of the pandemic, juice from MINUTE MAID in half gallon was $1.34 -- currently it is $1.68 11.25% inflation increase for this sugar water alone.

codemac• 3 years ago

I think most people would be fine if we had a national DB for prices.

Most people would not be fine if we had 3+ competing private db's with price info used to profit off of others lack of price knowledge.

Semaphor4• 3 years ago

It requires handing over quite some data, but here in Germany, I can get a digital PDF receipt from my main supermarket. There’s a parser on Github [0] that I contributed to (found it when I searched before writing it myself :D), and I use it to track price changes of items I buy. The situation could be a lot better, but at least it gives me some fun graphs.

[0] https://github.com/bietiekay/REWE-eBon-Parser

gruez4• 3 years ago

At the beginning of the pandemic, juice from MINUTE MAID in half gallon was $1.34 -- currently it is $1.68 11.25% inflation increase for this sugar water alone.

That sounds like a lot until you realize that "beginning of pandemic" (February 2020?) was almost 3 years ago, and the CPI itself has gone up 15.8% in the meantime.

rhacker• 3 years ago

I bet the government's inflation tracker is also connected to walmart links. No wonder the gov things we're at negative inflation.

mtoner232• 3 years ago

lol, they have armies of statisticians working on this stuff. its probably better than this person's side project website scraper.

93po4• 3 years ago

The US government has extremely strong incentives to report inflation as low as possible, so it's likely less about "thinking" we're at negative and more that they pick and choose data to show it intentionally.

moremetadata2• 3 years ago

Major employers can manipulate govt's in lots of ways like laying off staff to push up the unemployment figures, so if you get a Govt which wants to raise standards for the populations, major employers can make that difficult.

The prime objective of a business is to make profit, everything else is secondary.

tempsy4• 3 years ago

this is not true

whole foods in LA shows $3.29 for a dozen eggs https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/365-by-whole-foods-...

pishpash3• 3 years ago

Did you see them with your eyeballs at the store? You miss the point of the parent completely.

ravenstine2• 3 years ago

Indeed, it shows $3.29 for the Whole Foods in Pasadena. If that's the case, I guess I'd better start shopping for eggs there again despite having abandoned them for the poor quality food at the hot bar.

matthewdgreen• 3 years ago

Since this comment is at the top of the thread, I’m going to attach a quick reminder that egg prices are high due to a major outbreak of bird flu. I know that won’t keep this thread from degenerating into political rants about inflation, but maybe it will help someone move on with their day.

gh02t• 3 years ago

I believe the context of this post is likely the other one earlier today, which asserts that bird flu is being used as a pretense to gouge prices when the impact is actually minimal. I'm not taking a position one way or the other, but that's probably why this was posted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34898074

98codes• 3 years ago

are high due to a major outbreak of bird flu

Maybe at first, but now that providers are following the same path as oil companies and reporting record profits, I'm not buying it.

roenxi• 3 years ago

Sure, but how often do the politicians admit they caused inflation without some similar excuse?

"Bird Flu" is better than the usual "greedy landlords/businessmen". But when we hit record prices in 2023 there is the obvious point to make that the record price is usually in the most recent year. I'm also going to complain about people blaming the war in Ukraine for price rises, which is one of those moments where the cynics roll their eyes as politicians try to pretend that Russia and Ukraine combined represent some sort of economic superpower instead of backwaters.

These events affect the marginal price. Why are these things controlling the marginal price? Because of bad political decisions that stopped the marginal producer being someone with cheap goods to sell.

nickelpro• 3 years ago

You helped me move on with my day, much appreciated

mzs• 3 years ago

Might be grade A twelve count, that's available at the said price here.I checked when I went to get cheese just now. Yours is grade AA.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Large-White-Eggs-12-C...

ragazzina• 3 years ago

This is great. As a European, I would have thought the Southern USA would be the poorest states, so the cheapest. But it looks like the Midwest actually has the cheapest eggs?

petercooper• 3 years ago

Due to its size, the US has less centralization than most European countries so the proximity of production could affect prices. If you look at this image of US egg production in 2016, it seems to roughly match up with the image on the Eggspensive site: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hans-Windhorst/publicat...

shawabawa3• 3 years ago

That could be because the Midwest has one of the biggest agriculture industries in the world, so eggs have less distance to travel

dave78• 3 years ago

It's more likely to be related to proximity to the source (farms), which in my estimation are generally located in the areas with the most green on that map.

KMnO4• 3 years ago

That’s crazy. Just across the border in Canada, we are currently paying $2.21/dozen (converted to USD).

amelius• 3 years ago

Decouple from the geographical component and buy them on the internet.

swader999• 3 years ago

So many puns...

wintorez• 3 years ago

Eggcellent!

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

If this site made sure to include store addresses, it might actually drive egg prices down. I buy my coffee and popcorn at a different store from where I buy the rest of my groceries, I could certainly do that for eggs when they're at $4/doz.

mackman• 3 years ago

Weird, it looks like Massachusetts is the only state where every store has the same price. I wonder why MA is special in this regard.

Upvoter33• 3 years ago

A visualization that seems like a Walmart ad.

voakbasda2• 3 years ago

We raise chickens on non-GMO feed and collect over a dozen eggs per day. The eggs available at Walmart are utter garbage compared to those raised locally on good feed and pasture. There's no comparison.

Farm fresh egg yolks are the same orange color as the HN banner, while Walmart's eggs are pale imitations that were raised with copious antibiotics and literal shit in their feed. I would go so far as to say that their eggs help define the absolute bottom of this particular barrel.

I would be ashamed to be a producer for them, and it is upsetting to see their prices held up as some kind of standard. We could do better, but our metrics for success have been boiled down to little more than current clearance sale prices.

93po4• 3 years ago

I started buying the really expensive pasture raised chicken eggs for ethical reasons and can't go back to normal eggs anymore. They taste so much better. I'm sure yours are even better.

steve_adams_865• 3 years ago

Though the ethical choice is better in your case, I came to realize that chickens (as they exist for agriculture) are kind of strange abominations of what they came from, and they really do live bizarre lives of eating and pumping out eggs. As soon as they're spent they get turned into dog food or similar. Ethically it's better if they aren't trucked around and crammed in cages, but the end result is still servitude in which your body is used until it stops working the way people want it to, at which point you're disposed of like garbage.

In my mind I thought "If I care enough to reduce suffering to an arbitrary point, why not just eliminate it from my diet entirely? Why do I get to decide at which point the chickens suffer the correct amount?". Especially when the more ethical choice still involves the exploitation of the chicken, it seemed like the right choice to stop eating the food they make.

I don't miss eating eggs so it wasn't a hard choice to follow through on. I know some people depend on them far more than I did, or fewer foods are available to them. It's an interesting quandary though and I don't think my decision was the objectively perfect conclusion or anything – it's just worth considering over time.

dylanz• 3 years ago

I read somewhere that you can manipulate the yolk color through different types of feed, but I'm not sure if that's true or not. I used to raise a bunch of hens and yeah... nothing beats eggs from healthy ones. I "did" however get sick of eggs for a while... they're almost too productive! I finally built a network of neighbors who were gladly willing to take them off my hands.

algoatecorn5• 3 years ago

That is 100% the determining factor in yolk color. It comes down to carotenoid content of feed.

Also, in reference to the original comment, there is no difference between GMO and non-GMO feed either.

Some may claim that high carotenoid feed results in more nutritious eggs. That's debatable. Even super-cheap eggs are packed with nutrients. It's an egg, after all. However, the nutritional difference in conventional eggs vs backyard eggs is practically irrelevant. The differential nutrient contents are not significant and come in higher quantities in other foods that we all have cheap access to.

lbotos• 3 years ago

Yep -- You can change the feed to change the yolk. These are the "standard" colors: https://www.dsm.com/anh/products-and-services/tools/yolkfan....

jjeaff2• 3 years ago

Serious Eats did a taste test between home grown and store bought eggs. They found that if they added food coloring to the store bought eggs to make the color more orange like the home grown eggs, that taste testers were just as likely to prefer the store bought.

dumpHero22• 3 years ago

It's not just about the taste is it? I'd eat junk all day, if I only cared for the taste. Different color (without food coloring) signals different nutrients: https://www.justchartit.com/egg-yolk-color-chart/

dokem4• 3 years ago

Is there any macronutrient differences, though? And i'll be honest every egg I've every tasted has just tasted like egg.

bombcar10• 3 years ago

The main differences that I noticed was the thickness (strength) of the shell, and that you can change the taste somewhat by modifying the feed.

earthling8118• 3 years ago

Do you scramble the eggs mostly? I find I notice the most specific things about eggs when I leave the white and yolk separate. Scrambled eggs can be different too but it's harder to notice IMO.

metadat• 3 years ago

What happens to the chicken system when you go on vacation?

Edit: @voakbasda: thank you for the prompt and courteous reply, good info :)

voakbasda2• 3 years ago

I have not taken a vacation away from my farm in over ten years. I have had no interest in doing so, because I have everything that I want here.

But chickens? You can load up a feeder and provide ample water that would last for many days without supervision.

orbital-decay• 3 years ago

Isn't yolk color mostly related to the amount of carotenoids in it? I regularly see yolks of all colors in grocery store eggs, and they don't taste any different.

alana314• 3 years ago

The cheapest eggs on vons.com are $5.99 in Los Angeles. This is a cool data visualization but the closest data point it has for LA is Rosemead and it says they're $2.76.

0xffff2• 3 years ago

Vons is generally one if the higher end grocery stores. It's not all that surprising to me that Walmart would have eggs at half the price. I don't live in SoCal, so I can't say whether it's accurate, but the number of people I hear complaining about egg prices around me while I can still get eggs at $2.89/dozen at my local Safeway has left me deeply confused about this whole event.

bombcar10• 3 years ago

Portions of the country had REALLY cheap eggs. Before Covid hit, the local stores around here got into a fight with one of the convenience stores and kept dropping prices; it bottomed out somewhere around 29 cents a dozen (limit 5 dozen).

Now they're $4 minimum; normal "not insane sale" price before was $1.

samstave6• 3 years ago

But the thought process and critical thinking on such subjects is important, but agreed.

mmaunder• 3 years ago

This data is wildly inaccurate. Spot checking actual prices in the Walmart app in my neighborhood shows 130% swings in price between locations with the cheaper location prices just plain wrong. The actual prices are roughly the same for a dozen Great Value eggs of varying sizes (large, jumbo, etc) and the cheaper prices on Eggspensive don’t exist. In fact they’re lower than the price for 6 eggs at all the stores I checked.

jluxenberg2• 3 years ago

My wife and I started a vegan diet 6mo ago and while there was a transition period, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected.

If you're feeling the egg prices I'd encourage you to find ways to limit or remove eggs from your diet. It's easier than you think! Egg replacers work wonders in baked goods and a tofu scramble is similar to scrambled eggs.

voisin3• 3 years ago

If you think eggs are expensive, tofu scramble is easily 5x the cost per gram of scrambled eggs!

jluxenberg2• 3 years ago

Tofu scramble might be a little more expensive than egg-based version but 5x seems an exaggerated figure to me.

A 14oz package of tofu is probably the equivalent of 4 eggs and costs $2-3. So maybe 1.5x the cost of egg-based version. (Here's a great basic recipe https://www.budgetbytes.com/vegetable-tofu-scramble/)

Also, if you examine your diet you will probably find that you don't need to replace eggs with tofu 1:1. There are plenty of other ways to get protein (e.g. lentils, nutritional yeast, even whole wheat bread has protein).

dokem4• 3 years ago

Thanks for the tip! I've never heard of this vegan thing before. Will have to check it out.

jkestner2• 3 years ago

There's a monopoly on US eggs, and like seemingly every industry right now, they're blaming externalities to cover the fact that price increases are mostly going to shareholders. https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/23/cant-make-an-omelet/#keep...

dangwhy2• 3 years ago

price increases are mostly going to shareholders.

I am confused. how are they going to shareholders, unless shareholders are actually selling the stock? how exactly are price increases coming to me as a shareholder.

doodlesdev• 3 years ago

Dividends?

danuker• 3 years ago

Profit can stay as cash, pay down debt, get reinvested by upping costs, or get paid out as dividends to the owners.

Either way, the cash flow statement needs to reflect it, the book value of the company should reflect it, and the market value might reflect it.

seizethecheese• 3 years ago

I really was hoping this was going to be a chart of egg sales by supplier, not a political screed.

busterarm7• 3 years ago

We're almost at 60 Million dead poultry in the US from H5N1 since Jan '22.

Even before that during covid, there were super long periods of unprofitability for raising turkey to the point that you couldn't even buy whole turkeys in most of the southeastern US for over 10 months.

Monopolies are a problem but certainly not the cause of this one.

ProbablyRyaan• 3 years ago

We're almost at 60 Million dead poultry in the US from H5N1 since Jan '22.

Wouldn't we see an increase (equal or more) in chicken meat prices as well? If the info is correct...

2020-2023 chicken meat is ~22% higher: https://www.in2013dollars.com/Chicken/price-inflation/2020-t...

2020-2023 eggs are ~91% higher: https://www.in2013dollars.com/Eggs/price-inflation/2020-to-2...

pixl97• 3 years ago

I mean, 60 million sounds like a big number, but it seems that the average number of chickens slaughtered per day in the US is somewhere around 24 million birds.

I think you may underestimate the scale of poultry slaughter in the US.

dokem4• 3 years ago

So there wasn't a monopoly 3 years ago?

tzs• 3 years ago

OT: quite a few mentions of Walmart in the comments, so, speaking of Walmart, is search in purchase history working for any of you?

For me for at least the last month or two it reports no items found, unless I search for something that I purchased the one time I used delivery, which was in November 2020.

For purchases done in store with checkout via the app those still show up in purchase history, but search can't find anything in them.

eddof13• 3 years ago

I'll have you know in Mexico my eggs are still $1.50 or less a dozen

dokem4• 3 years ago

I'm starting to feel like the cartel is more competent that our (US) gov.

dang• 3 years ago

Related ongoing thread:

Record-Breaking Egg Profits Prompt Accusation of Price Gouging - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34898074 - Feb 2023 (104 comments)

whoomp12342• 3 years ago

it makes me a little sad that the dots on the map are not egg shaped.

insane_dreamer• 3 years ago

Nice site!

It might be good to note that these are probably the absolute worst eggs you can buy, so this represents the bottom of the barrel in terms of prices.

I suspect some of the data may be incorrect. Hard to believe that a Walmart in southern Oregon is selling those eggs for $5/dozen when you can easily get good eggs for that price elsewhere.

I'm happy to pay twice as much for eggs that I know are from healthy chickens humanely raised (pasture raised).

rgrieselhuber• 3 years ago

Are we allowed to ask about the fires destroying egg farms?

noonething• 3 years ago

Funny how near east palestine, eggs are the cheapest

voisin3• 3 years ago

100% of people who confuse correlation and causation die. Just sayin’

rpastuszak• 3 years ago

I don't live in the US and my procrastination muscle hasn't developed enough yet to pretend to care about this instead of wrapping up my work.

But, Bickle Knob n. Elkins, a.k.a. ♫The House of the Cheapest Egg in America♫ is such a beautiful area. Just check it on DDG images on Google. It reminds me of the mountains in southern Poland where I grew up.

I highly recommend using the map as an excuse to spend some time on virtual tourism, akin to hitting "random" on Wikipedia.

I guess I am procrastinating after all.

bityard• 3 years ago

In my area, they look to be only using Walmart stores. There are so many better options around here, I never shop for groceries at Walmart unless I only need one or two things and I'm already there for something else.

stvnwd• 3 years ago

From the info popup: "This website tracks the price of "12 Great Value Large White Eggs" at Walmart locations across the U.S."

anovikov• 3 years ago

Cons always frustrated about gas prices and who to blame for them, now libs also have some metric to obsess about!

vram22• 3 years ago

Eggspensive ... nice, after ChatGPT, now they made eggs think. But grammar not eggsactly right, adjective should be before noun.

ginko• 3 years ago

I find it kind of strange that $5 for a dozen eggs is considered expensive. I'm from Austria and more used to 2.90€ for half a dozen freerange eggs.

How is it possible to pay less than $2 for a dozen eggs without treating the chicken like absolute shit?

bombcar10• 3 years ago

it would depend on how you feed and handle them, but you can throw some chickens in your backyard and have them eat food scraps for nearly nothing at all

voisin3• 3 years ago

without treating the chicken like absolute shit?

I think you answered your own question. These are not organic, free range. They are kept in shoebox size pens and have horrible lives.

Ccecil• 3 years ago

Like I said to my family members when this topic came up the other day. "Egg prices are barely a blip compared to paying an extra 2 months rent per year for no reason"

If investigating collusion...I suggest starting with real estate.

dymk2• 3 years ago

Everything has gone up in price. Egg alone may be barely a blip, but people don't buy one dozen eggs per week to sustain themselves on. They buy a few bags of groceries, which have doubled (or more) in price in the last year where I live - that might be a few hundred per month extra.

gruez4• 3 years ago

They buy a few bags of groceries, which have doubled (or more) in price in the last year where I live - that might be a few hundred per month extra.

That's entirely inconsistent with government data[1], which only report a 22% rise since pre-pandemic.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL

einpoklum• 3 years ago

Apparently, there are no egg retailers other than Walmart.

dymk2• 3 years ago

At my local Safeway, low-end eggs have gone up proportionally less than high quality eggs. Cheapest went from $1.50 to $2.50. Pasture raised hen eggs went from $4/dozen to $8.50/dozen in the last year.

Bummer, because the low-quality ones taste... not great, and they have weak yolks.

theflyingelvis• 3 years ago

An eggcitedly quick eggxamination of this eggemplary eggxample of web design made me, no eggaggeration, eggtremely egghausted.

labster• 3 years ago

Puns are truly your oeuvre.

h2odragon• 3 years ago

We have pet chickens and get a half dozen a day even now in the dead of winter. We got eggs coming out our ears. We give them freely to friends and neighbors, but there's no way for us to share our bounty any further, really. We can go to a flea market or sit beside the road with a sign "Eggs $3/dz" but few people want to buy eggs in such a context.

There's a local Farmer's Co-Op, in theory they could pay people for eggs brought in and sell them to the public and that might make economic sense; but i can't imagine the liabilities and legal hurdles actually making something likethat happen would incur. Significant im sure.

jliptzin• 3 years ago

Are people eating so many eggs that a few dollars difference per dozen is breaking the bank? If you eat 2 eggs a day, an extra $3 per dozen is $15/mo

pqdbr• 3 years ago

Maybe it's possible to extrapolate the price difference to the entire store? I know it's a single data point, but maybe it reveals cheaper stores nearby than the ones you're currently shopping.

sabujp2• 3 years ago

love it, would love to see this for T item

sabujp2• 3 years ago

would love to see maps like this for T item

zactato• 3 years ago

I mostly buy my eggs from local farms at the farmers market for ~$10. I'm in the Bay area so nothing is cheap. Price have gone up lately as many of the farmers have had to cull based on bird flu.

This is a bit more than I'd like to pay, but its not going to break the bank. I'm happy to have some eggs that taste good and I know come from birds that aren't tortured.

Its odd to me that people are totally willing to spend $60k on a car but whine about eggs that costs more than $0.50. To each their own.

opportune3• 3 years ago

If you’re buying 1dozen eggs per week (totally normal for many people), going from $2/dozen to $6/dozen is $200 a year you just lost on just one staple

dcormier• 3 years ago

I wish it were more colorblind friendly. ~8% of males are colorblind. I’m one of them. The colors in the middle of the scale are hard to make out.

Eggspensive

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