It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Eggs Up Grill has 90 restaurants in nine southern states, up from 26 in 2018. Florida-based Another Broken Egg Café celebrated its 100th restaurant last year. Fast-food chains are also adding more breakfast items. Starbucks, which launched egg bites in 2017, now has a breakfast menu with 12 separate items containing eggs. Wendy’s reintroduced breakfast in 2020 and offers 10 items with eggs. Reviews website Yelp said 6,421 breakfast and brunch businesses opened in the United States last year, 23% more than in 2019. In normal times, producers could meet the demand for all those eggs. But an ongoing bird flu outbreak, which so far has forced farms to slaughter nearly 159 million chickens, turkeys and other birds — including nearly 47 million since the start of December — is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. In January, the average price of eggs in the U.S. hit a record $4.95 per dozen. The percentage of eggs that go to U.S. restaurants versus other places, like grocery stores or food manufacturers, is not publicly available. U.S. Foods, a restaurant supplier, and Cal-Maine Foods, the largest U.S. producer of shell eggs, did not respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment…Read more