CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Alpha8472
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CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by Alpha8472 »

CVS and Walgreens have gone cage free 3 years early. Do consumers want cage free eggs? Do these stores charge more? Is it a money maker?

https://drugstorenews.com/cvs-walgreens ... ears-early
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: January 14th, 2023, 9:28 pm CVS and Walgreens have gone cage free 3 years early. Do consumers want cage free eggs? Do these stores charge more? Is it a money maker?

https://drugstorenews.com/cvs-walgreens ... ears-early
I noticed on a couple packages of cage free eggs I bought recently that the yellow yolk had small blood spots on it. This was one specific brand I bought 2 packages of for the first time last month. Prior purchases of cage free eggs from other retailers did not have this issue. I threw the first egg I saw like this out but then I cracked 2 more and had another like that and decided to see if I really have to throw these out. I searched online and found this is not dangerous to eat and it can be caused by malnutrition or other things. I am wondering if this cage free set up is a "survival of the fittest" for the chickens so the ones that are more aggressive get more food and the less aggressive ones get less food since they are not all being evenly fed the same amount of feed. Then leading to this yolk issue.
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by Alpha8472 »

Cage-free does not mean chickens outdoors with room to roam. It means crowded indoor warehouses where chickens are packed together without cages. It might sound better than cages, but they are now fighting for food in stressful conditions. The cost of cage-free is not much more than before, but now stores can charge more and people let them get away with it.
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by storewanderer »

Walgreens has/had private label eggs from their refrigerated grocery distributor and I believe they deal with a single distributor for all of their stores. This enables them to randomly run sale prices on weird things they get like chubs of ground beef and also they like to run sales on small packs of Oscar Mayer Bacon or Franks a lot. CVS I wasn't even aware sold eggs anymore, but if they do, they get them DSD from whoever the local milk supplier in a given area is.
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by storewanderer »

Ok, yes, CVS does have some cage free eggs in Reno. They have them in a one dozen package at 9.49.

Highest price I've ever seen for a dozen of eggs, great work CVS!

There were 4 packs in the cooler. I cannot imagine anyone is going to buy them. I don't know why they are bothering.
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by mbz321 »

Do enough people really buy eggs at Pharmacies for it to be that important of an issue?
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by BillyGr »

mbz321 wrote: January 17th, 2023, 9:21 am Do enough people really buy eggs at Pharmacies for it to be that important of an issue?
Only if they offer a good deal on them!

Walgreens here was at one point advertising them cheap relative to other stores, so I would get them there when needed (along with a number of other food items, honey being one frequent example).

Not sure how many would do this, but those items do run out when on sale some weeks, so there must be enough interest to sell what they have available (which can be more than many pharmacies in these types of categories).
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by HCal »

BillyGr wrote: January 17th, 2023, 3:24 pm
mbz321 wrote: January 17th, 2023, 9:21 am Do enough people really buy eggs at Pharmacies for it to be that important of an issue?
Only if they offer a good deal on them!
Or more likely, when they need eggs and don't want to make another stop. This is how convenience stores function. They charge higher prices to make up for lower volume, and basically profit from people who want to quickly get something they forgot or suddenly need, without having to make another trip to a supermarket.

Back to the original question, I think that production facilities are switching to cage-free in response to mandates in several states. They may not want to wait until the last minute. Pharmacies are generally overpriced for eggs, so they are a good candidate to get the cage free ones first. If you're already paying $7 instead of $4, what's another dollar?
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by storewanderer »

HCal wrote: January 17th, 2023, 10:32 pm
BillyGr wrote: January 17th, 2023, 3:24 pm
mbz321 wrote: January 17th, 2023, 9:21 am Do enough people really buy eggs at Pharmacies for it to be that important of an issue?
Only if they offer a good deal on them!
Or more likely, when they need eggs and don't want to make another stop. This is how convenience stores function. They charge higher prices to make up for lower volume, and basically profit from people who want to quickly get something they forgot or suddenly need, without having to make another trip to a supermarket.

Back to the original question, I think that production facilities are switching to cage-free in response to mandates in several states. They may not want to wait until the last minute. Pharmacies are generally overpriced for eggs, so they are a good candidate to get the cage free ones first. If you're already paying $7 instead of $4, what's another dollar?
Many restaurants have already switched to cage free eggs network wide, same for some hotels (I think they use those powdered eggs or if you're lucky frozen eggs or perhaps refrigerated bagged pre-scrambled eggs), across the US.

I am curious if the current egg pricing is somehow a manipulation by the egg industry to undermine these cage free rules and get some states to cancel the mandates. Or to use this as an excuse in upcoming legislative sessions where new states propose cage free egg legislation as a reason to not go forward with such legislation. This pricing is not helping the inflation situation any; eggs go into a lot of products. Also, many government programs buy or pay for a lot of eggs and this is really messing up their budgets; those school breakfast programs and WIC programs specifically.

As was previously mentioned, Walgreens used to run sales on eggs with pretty good frequency. This wasn't so much because Walgreens wanted to sell a high volume of eggs, it was more just so the eggs wouldn't all spoil out on the stores. Running a sale every few weeks was usually enough to create sales that would allow for the eggs to not spoil.
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Re: CVS & Walgreens Sourcing Cage Free Eggs 3 Year's Early

Post by Alpha8472 »

There is an egg shortage at stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. The egg producers are charging high prices to stores. The stores are selling them at a loss. So many stores are not even ordering as many eggs as before. Why sell them at a loss?

The egg producers are making tons of money and claiming the higher prices are due to the bird flu killing chickens.

A local egg farm is charging cheap prices for eggs. The bird flu excuse is only being used by the big chicken farms.
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