SpartanNash CEO Tony Sarsam gave CNBC’s Jim Cramer a read on the egg pricing landscape and explained how the grocery wholesalers and retail store operator tries to keep costs to customers down.
“Eggs have been a little bit of a challenge the last two years,” Sarsam said. “It is a constant, constant effort to kind of get the right pricing.”
As the highly contagious and deadly bird flu spreads through farms across the U.S., wholesale egg prices have skyrocketed past record levels this year — and some retailers like Trader Joe’s and Costco have put limitations on consumers’ egg purchases. Earlier this month, CNBC reported that the average wholesale prices for large, white shell eggs hit $8 a dozen, substantially beating the previous record, according to data from agricultural commodity price tracker Expana.
Sarsam said “it’s a complicated story with eggs,” explaining that there has been two straight years of avian flu that drove up prices, calling the outbreaks “temporary events” that drove up prices. In order to keep costs down, he said SpartanNash works to get longer term supply agreements with farmers to “actually lock in on a great price.” He said his company is constantly monitoring egg prices and claimed it has a very competitive offering.
But despite the unusually high cost of eggs, Sarsam said inflation on grocery essentials has largely decreased to pre-pandemic levels. He also described how SpartanNash has worked over the past couple of years to transform merchandising in order to minimize passing inflation down to customers.
“Food has stabilized in terms of what people are seeking in those really, really important fundamentals in their life,” Sarsam said.
