Denny’s, a US chain restaurant best-known for its breakfast offerings, has announced a surcharge on all menu items that contain eggs. The charges comes as egg prices in the US have skyrocketed due to the impact of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu.

Denny’s said that: “This pricing decision is market-by-market, and restaurant-by-restaurant due to the regional impacts of the egg shortage.”

At the start of the month, another breakfast chain, Waffle House, introduced a 50% surcharge on all egg items.

According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) outbreaks of bird flu in commercial table egg layer flocks resulted in the depopulation of 13.2 million birds in December 2024.

About 18.8 million commercial egg layers were affected by bird flu in January 2025, the highest monthly total since the outbreak began in 2022. Egg prices in January 2025 were 53% higher than the year before, and surpassed the previous peak prices in January 2023.

Additional figures released by the USDA yesterday (Tuesday, February 25) showed that egg prices are predicted to increase by 41.1% in 2025.

The US Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, recently visited a farm in Texas where she stated that the Biden administration failed to take the lead on avian flu, and now American families were paying the price.

“President Trump understands the importance of addressing this issue head on, and USDA is taking action to support farmers, strengthen supply chains, and bring egg prices down,” she said.

Today in Washington D.C, Secretary Rollins announced a new strategy by USDA to curb the spread of the virus, and lower the price of eggs.

This includes investing $500 million in biosecurity measures to keep the virus off farms. The US government will also spend $400 million to reimburse farmers with affected flocks to allow them to start repopulating their flock as soon as feasible.

The secretary also announced that deregulation of the egg industry would be another aspect that the USDA will look at, along with the importation of eggs for a brief period to help reduce the cost as quickly as possible.

Last week it was revealed that USDA had accidentally fired several employees who were working on the department’s response to bird flu, and was working to rehire them. The workers were among the thousands of federal employees whose termination was recommended by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Since the beginning of the first outbreaks in January 2022, over 166 million poultry have been killed in 51 states and territories, according to the CDC.

McDonald’s

While other fast-food chains mitigate against the rising costs of eggs, McDonald’s is rejecting the idea of adding a surcharge in its restaurants. The company’s chief impact officer in North America, Michael Gonda, took to LinkedIn to say “you definitely WON’T see McDonald’s USA issuing surcharges on eggs.”

This comes as the fast-food chain prepares for National Egg McMuffin day in the US on March 2, when customers can buy an egg mcmuffin or a sausage mcmuffin with egg breakfast sandwich for just $1.