WING SHORTAGE CAUSING A FLAP
Shortage may have Super Bowl hosts calling an audible
America, we have another crisis. We’re running out of chicken wings.
Days before the Super Bowl, a veritable annual chicken wing holiday, food service providers are scrambling to get their hands on these delectable morsels of poultry — and paying top dollar for them, too.
The U.S. chicken wing market is dominated by the sports calendar. Consumption and sales peak right before the Super Bowl in February and a month and a half later before the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Prices generally ebb and flow with that schedule, spiking before the competitions and coming back down to earth steadily through the rest of the year.
But wing prices have been flying high for months now during the coronavirus pandemic. Experts say there are a number of drivers of the increase, but chief among them is that we’re all eating a ton of chicken, including wings. The shortage isn’t so much that producers aren’t making enough wings, it’s that consumers want more and more (and more) of them to scarf down.
“What’s been really strange about this year is it’s actually been really strong since late summer, the demand for wings,” said Christine McCracken, executive director of animal protein at Rabobank. “And that’s made it a bit harder for people who didn’t have a plan going into (the Super Bowl) or are trying to catch up with demand.”
FAT Brands, the company behind wing chains Buffalo’s, Hurricane Grill & Wings, Ponderosa Steakhouse and six other restaurant franchises, began planning for the 2021 Super Bowl a year ago, said Andy Wiederhorn, the company’s president and chief executive.
He said the company is wellstocked, but is still making lastminute arrangements to shore up supplies.