What egg shortage? The city's vegan bakers are finally vindicated [View all]

[Montauk6]

Watching the avian flu crisis play out, a fringe group of pastry chefs are having an I-told-you-so moment

The Great Egg Recession is officially upon us. The national tipping point might have been a few days ago, when Waffle House put a 50-cent surcharge on its menu. For the past few years, the egg shortage has been ramping up due to the avian flu, which has affected 22 million chickens in the U.S. The resulting egg deficit has sent pastry chefs into a panic.

“We are playing the game and trying to find the cheapest price, which last week was between $118 to $260 for a case of 180,” says Black Jet Baking Co. owner Gillian Shaw Lundgren. “For context, in recent times, eggs were usually about $69.” Other San Francisco bakers have turned to acting like linebackers, diving for fumbles in the egg section of Costco. However, a select few have been sheltered from the drama — and, in fact, are celebrating a kind of win.

Those are the vegan bakers — a surprisingly small, often maligned, subcategory.

“Until recently, I honestly didn’t know anything about it,” Danny Montoya says of the egg crisis. The co-owner of the Outer Richmond woodworking studio and cafe The Butterfly Joint (alongside his wife, Erin Feher, The Standard’s style and design editor), Montoya makes vegan, gluten-free, baked doughnuts that draw lines of people from beyond the neighborhood. He is not a vegan himself but knew there was demand for the treats, which he makes in flavors like orange bomb, chile lime, and matcha. For a binder, he uses arrowroot instead of eggs.

https://sfstandard.com/2025/02/08/vegan-bakers-egg-shortage/