We Made It Through Covid Just To Fight Another Battle- A Nation-Wide Chicken Wing Shortage
Fox Business - Soaring demand for chicken has resulted in wing shortages across America, according to the country’s third-largest poultry producer.
The Laurel, Mississippi-based Sanderson Farms Inc. said it does not have enough supply to keep up with demand despite recently picking up 40 million pounds per year.
"We cannot supply enough wings to anybody, at retail or at foodservice," Joe Sanderson, CEO of Sanderson Farms, said at the Goldman Sachs Global Staples Forum on Tuesday. Sanderson said his company each week ends up short 15 loads of wings for both retail and food service.
The company plans to "allocate" wings to make sure "everybody gets some," he said, noting that the combination of strong demand and limited supplies will cause prices to climb even higher from current levels.
Wing prices have already risen to $3.16 per pound for customers picking Sanderson’s dock, mimicking strong gains that have occurred in other chicken products. Boneless chicken breast prices have climbed 236% since the fall to $2.25 per pound while tenders have spiked 77% to $2.43.
NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
When will it end?!?! Seriously, when does this end???????? Just when we thought 2020 would be the worst year of our lives, 2021 had to come along and give us a chicken wing shortage?? Is this like the old bible story about the plagues or what not? Or the flood? Are we just being punished back to back for our sinning? And if so, what can we do to fix this before its too late?
We are a simple creature, us humans of Earth. We like sports. We like boobs. And we like chicken wings. Everything else is just the rake. But without chicken wings, we are an incomplete circle. Merely a fragment of our whole selves. And think about the kind, poor people of the great city of Buffalo. How are they coping right now? I am worried for our Northern brethren. It would be like taking crab cakes away from Baltimore or spaghetti and meatballs away from Philly, you just don't do it.
To cope with the shortage, restaurants are now having to raise their prices on the now-luxury items:
KTVZ - Ryan Duley, director of sales and marketing at Sunriver Brewing, says his restaurants have had to raise their chicken wing prices.
"When you're looking at someone's menu and the most expensive thing on their menu is chicken wings it doesn't really make a lot of sense,” Duley said Tuesday.
Due to the national chicken wing shortage, some restaurants, including Sunriver Brewing, might end up paying more for fewer wings.
"It's already changed -- we've already made some changes to our menus,” Duley said.
Their chicken wing prices increased from $15 to $17 and will include fewer wings.
Is there a chance chicken wings are the new lobster??? It really does beg the question if Big Chicken is behind this shortage, making wings scarce to drive up demand and prices. You know the food that I crave the most? The one I can't get. Chick-Fil-A probably makes more money off me because they are closed on Sundays that I need to go on both Saturday and Monday. It's genius.
I hope we get back to reasonably priced wings. But I also don't hate the idea of wings now being the creme de la creme of fine dining, nothing would be more American than that.