CT restaurants adapt to chicken wing shortage
Jason Carlucci’s Dew Drop Inn in Derby is a destination for chicken wings, with a dizzying variety of sauces and dry rubs: more than 100 options and counting, everything from mild buffalo and traditional BBQ to peanut butter and jelly and “s’mores.”
But as a nationwide chicken wing shortage is causing issues with supply and spiking prices, it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep his restaurant’s signature item on the menu.
“I can tell you that the price of wings has doubled, in just one year since COVID started,” Carlucci said.
What’s causing the shortage? Restaurant owners cite a number of explanations they’ve heard from their suppliers: understaffing at poultry processing
plants, an increase in orders as more eateries and bars reopen at full capacity, a rising demand for wings as a takeout and delivery item that travels well. Others have pointed to the February winter freeze in Texas and surrounding states, which are major chickenproducing regions.
“The way that it was explained to me was that because the economy has opened back up again and [businesses] are operating at 100 percent capacity, the plants, who are operating with fewer employees and not really operating at their full manufacturing capacity, simply cannot keep up with the demands nationwide,” said Lisa Marcantonio, head of marketing and recruiting for Sliders Grill & Bar. Sliders has five locations in Berlin, Middletown, Plainville, Southington and Wallingford.
The chicken wing shortage comes at an already difficult time for owners, who report rising costs of other food items, a surge in the price of cooking oil and an ongoing staffing shortage as Connecticut prepares to lift its pandemic-related business restrictions on May 19.
Carlucci remembers paying between $70 and $80 for a case of wings at the start of the pandemic, but is now paying $140 to $150 per case. He’s also run into shortages, receiving significantly less product if he orders a certain amount of cases.
While he’s avoided raising prices so far, he said, he may be left with no choice.
“Any business owner probably has raised their prices at this point when it comes to chicken. If they haven’t yet, then they will,” he said. “Especially those places like myself who specialize in it, and get so [much] of it.”
Matt Bacco, co-owner of The Blind Rhino sports bars in Black Rock and South Norwalk, said he first noticed wing prices spiking about three months ago. It’s common for pricing to go up around the Super Bowl, he said, but it normally eases after the event. This year, it didn’t.
“It went in the wrong direction,” Bacco said. In 2019, he remembers wings priced at about $1.30 to $1.70 per pound. Around the time of the Super Bowl earlier this year, he said prices were about $3.25 a pound. Last week, he said a pound of wings cost him $4.34.
The Blind Rhino buys “fresh, large” chicken wings, he said, so it’s conceivable that a “six-pack” order at the restaurant could amount to a pound of wings. Between the chicken materials, sauces, rubs, side of vegetables, paper serving products and labor, it’s increasingly difficult to make a profit off one of the sports bars’ most popular items. Bacco said his restaurants have not raised prices yet.
“I think once a year we probably have this conversation and basically say, this is already one of our highest margin items even though it’s our bread and butter, which probably doesn’t make for a great model,” he said. “We work around it, we make our rent with beer and stuff like that, so we’re willing to provide a better wing for that.”
“It’s tough because where do you compromise? You either have to raise the price or lower the quality and we aren’t willing to do either, so that's our problem,” he said. “But it is what it is, and you can't charge that much for six wings, so there’s sort of a cap.”
Some restaurants are opting out of serving wings for a temporary period. At Cold Creek Tavern in Ellington, owners posted on Facebook May 11 that they were pulling bone-in wings from the menu “until we see a correction in the market,” citing a substantial price increase and limited availability.
Mulberry Street Pizza in Manchester alerted its customers to the wing shortage on May 6, warning diners that pricing may increase. Co-owner Danita Sulick said the restaurant isn’t making any profits on the item, as Mulberry Street is known for serving jumbo-size wings and doesn’t want to compromise with a smaller option.
The restaurant previously served wings in orders of 12 and 25, she said, but they added an 8-piece order as prices rose so customers could have a less-expensive price point. They have run out of wing supplies a few times in the past week, as they too have received shipments with fewer cases than desired.
Sulick said Mulberry Street has so far absorbed the increased cost, but is considering its options, like charging “market price” for wings based on the fluctuating market, or only offering them as a weekend special.
Wing It On, with locations in New Britain, Stratford and Waterbury, posted on its Facebook page May 8 that the restaurant is also experiencing shortages and even canceled deliveries.
“We have decided to allow delivery of alternative wings to the ones we normally sell,” they wrote. “These wings may at times be slightly larger or smaller than our normal wing spec and we apologize for any inconsistency and fluctuation in size over the coming months.”
Wing It On noted that the “wing world” is projected to be back to normal by mid-summer, as the pandemic subsides and poultry processing plant employees return to work.
The supply issue has even affected national wing chains like Buffalo Wild Wings. The restaurant’s customer service Twitter account has been responding to diners for a few weeks, acknowledging a limited supply of traditional wings at its sports bars and encouraging them to try boneless wings, sandwiches and burgers instead.
At Sliders, Marcantonio said though wing costs are increasing, the restaurant group’s suppliers so far have been able to fulfill orders without “many blips on the radar.” Sliders has been able to keep bone-in wings on the menu without raising prices to reflect the situation. But she called it a “week to week process,” making sure each store can receive its necessary inventory.
“Normally we don’t have to pay as close attention to this. This is usually a non-issue,” she said. “But this is now something that we monitor very closely daily and weekly.”
Marcantonio’s husband Fred first launched Sliders in 1993, and she said this is the first time they’ve ever experienced a chicken wing shortage in nearly three decades.
“It’s really something,” she said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before...Just like COVID, there’s a first time for everything.”
Tommy Wyatt and friends Don Peronace and Ryan Pasler call themselves the “Wingaddicts,” running a Facebook group, YouTube channel and blog where they review the chicken wings at establishments across the state. Since they launched the project in February 2020, Wyatt estimates they’ve eaten more than 6,000 wings.
Wyatt said he’s been aware of the wing supply issue for about a month as it’s escalated, and the Wingaddicts have begun to feature restaurants’ other menu items in their review videos alongside wings, such as chicken and waffles.
“I guess we’re going to have to become Tacoaddicts or something like that,” he joked. “I hope we don’t lose our gig.”