Soaring egg prices leads to theft from local food cart, owner says

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - It’s crime that one local food cart owner said he’s never seen in more than a decade of running his business, Fried Egg I’m in Love.

The owner, Jace Krause, said a shipment of eggs to his food cart in north Portland was broken into, and about eight dozen eggs were stolen. He blames the rising cost of eggs for the crime. Krause said his business is feeling the pain of inflation on eggs, but losing nearly one hundred is another blow for already trying to pay for an already expensive ingredient.

“I was surprised at first but given the price of eggs right now, I’m not surprised,” Krause said.

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Typically, when Krause’s egg suppliers come by, they drop off his cases when employees are around. But he believes Thursday was one of those days they were ahead of schedule, and the thieves took advantage of it.

“Sometimes they get here a little before we open so they’re sitting here for a little bit,” Krause said. “They got here and someone had taken about half a case of eggs, that’s a new one for us.”

Krause said his cart has been the victim of other break-ins and vandalism but eggs were never the target. But now eggs are becoming just as valuable as money in his register.

“They’re still very high, 70, 80 bucks a case,” Krause said. “It really varies. That’s what’s so hard about running a business. You want to have stability and egg prices are going up and down so much. It’s hard to get that stability and have our prices remain at a certain point.”

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Not only is Krause losing money from the stolen eggs, but he won’t be able to sell up to 100 sandwiches Thursday. That’s about a third of what he sells on average in one day. He said from now on he’ll try to make sure the supplies drop off his shipment when someone is around, but he understands they have their own schedule. Even with this theft and the skyrocketing price of eggs, he’s optimistic things will get better.

“I hope there will be some stability in the future,” Krause said. “2022 has been the most challenging year to run this business for sure.”

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