Where to find fresh, available eggs in Southern California

If you hadn’t noticed, the cost for a dozen eggs at your local grocery store has skyrocketed over the last several months and that’s if you can find them on the store’s shelves. Now, many in Southern California are turning to local farmers for their egg supply.  

Rancho Cucamonga resident Stephanie Vickers told KTLA that the prohibitive cost of eggs has kept them completely off her grocery list for a while now.  

“Honestly, it was during Thanksgiving,” she said when asked when her last egg purchase was.  

An outbreak of avian influenza in 2022 is largely to blame for soaring prices and widespread shortages of the staple poultry product. Any time the virus is detected on a poultry farm, the entire flock of chickens is slaughtered to limit the spread of the virus. With massive egg producers, who routinely house more than a million chickens, even a few infections can disrupt the egg supply.  

It might come as no surprise then that local grocery stores are putting a limit on how many eggs customers can purchase at a time.  

Trader Joe’s patrons nationwide can now only buy a single dozen per visit to the store, so that more customers can find eggs when they hit the store.  

At an Inland Empire Whole Foods, where egg shelves had already been wiped clean, a posted sign said that customers were only allowed three cartons each.  

“Really it’s just a matter of supply and demand at this point,” KTLA Consumer Reporter David Lazarus said. “As bird flu ravages the poultry stock, what we’re seeing are millions of eggling hens being put down to try to limit the spread of bird flu and upshot of that isn’t just higher chicken prices, but much, much higher egg prices.”  

Lazarus also said stores are falling back on pandemic-style rationing to allow everyone a fair share because egg hoarding has been an issue. His advice is to shop around.  

“There are stores selling eggs at semi-reasonable prices,” he said. “I’d also suggest farmers markets.”  

Rosemary Farm, a Southern California egg producer with a farm in Rancho Cucamonga is one spot where customers can buy eggs from the source.  

Maust Family Farms in Chino, which has been around since 1957, is yet another option. Fortunately, their smaller location has not been hit by avian flu, what happening nationwide has brought on an influx of customers, some whom never knew they had a local farm in their backyard. Because of the high demand, the farm is limiting customers to two flats or 40 eggs per customer.  

“There’s two and a half dozen here and we put these in dozens for everybody, but this will run $7.25 per dozen, so this tray right here is $17.95,” Paul Maust told KTLA’s Shelby Nelson. “We’re getting the eggs much fresher, instead of bringing in the eggs from out of state where it can be a couple of weeks before they’re on the shelves.”