Chicken wing flap blamed on peckish food orderers
Board VP: Surge in at-home dining led to price hikes, shortages
Chickens may not really fly but the cost of their wings is soaring in restaurants and bars — at least for those that still offer them.
“They are calling it a shortage,” Ronnie Daniel, the head chef at Towne Tavern, which is known for its wings here. The price for a basket of 10 wings in recent weeks has risen from $11 to $14.99, typical for other eateries in the area.
“We can’t even get them sometimes,” said Natty Watson, of Natty’s Caribbean Cuisine in Albany. While he features Jamaican favorites like curry and jerk chicken, his customers also go for wings, even though the price has risen about 40 percent, he said.
And with wings hard to find, some places have stopped offering the saucy appendages.
What’s behind this fowl trend?
A flock of factors, say those in the poultry business, who also stress that the sky isn’t really falling when it comes to wings.
“It’s more of a demand issue than a supply issue,” according to Tom Super, a vice president of the National Chicken Coun
▶
cil, a trade group of chicken producers.
“Wing demand has been through the roof,” he added.
Some of that has to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.
While lots of formal sit-down restaurants closed or curtailed their business during the height of the pandemic, many places offering takeout such as pizza parlors stayed open, relying on home delivery service. It’s not unusual for such establishments to offer wings as well.
As a result, wing demand and consumption stayed strong through the pandemic. Now, with other restaurants opening back up, chicken processors are working to keep up.
There, however, has also been a drop in production, stemming from the bad winter weather in Texas and other southern states that are major chicken producers. “Chicken producers are doing everything they can to overcome the devastating impact of Mother Nature when she inflicted the once-ina-lifetime winter storm on Texas and nearby states — major chicken-producing regions,” said Super who described the situation as more of a “tight supply” rather than a shortage.
“It will take time and effort to eventually replace the impacted hatchery supply flocks in that region, but supply should catch back up to demand soon,” he added. “Keep in mind, too, that this weather event took place in February, right after the biggest event of the year for wings: the Super Bowl.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, production of broilers, or chickens raised for meat, fell 4 percent in the first quarter of 2021 with the pounds produced down 3 percent.
Production has started rising again, said Super, and the USDA expects a 3.3 percent increase in the second quarter.
And there is the simple fact that each chicken only has two wings.
“Producers don’t raise chickens just for the wings,” Super said. “They have to sell all of the other parts, as well.”