The Big Apple’s egg crisis is no yolk!
An Upper West Side Trader Joe’s is cracking down on customers finding cracks to its one-carton-per household purchase policy.
Trader Joe’s has maintained some of the lowest prices on eggs since the avian flu drove up prices to as high as $15.99 a dozen — selling them for around $3.99 per carton until they’re gone.
Customers began hoarding them and the store enacted its strict policy last month after some tried buying up to 15 cartons at a time.
So egg-loving customers at the store on Broadway and West 72nd Street began to adapt.
Some buy a carton, leave the store and come right back — hoping no one notices. Married couples swear they don’t live with their significant other to skirt the rule.
One family recently tried to have their two elementary-school aged kids buy a carton each, and the parents split up to buy them as well. One kid was successful — but the other was busted, their parents told The Post.
“If we never ran into a situation where people were trying to buy 14, 15 dozen at a time, we probably wouldn’t have had to do anything,” a manager said.
Added a worker: “You could cheat the system a little bit — but we catch it.”
On a recent weekday around 12:30 p.m., a crowd was forming before the day’s second and final delivery of eggs even came out.
“Our focus is on trying to be fair,” the manager said. “It’s not punitive.”
Queens resident Flor Londaiz said she tried the UWS Trader Joe’s, which is near her job, twice in one day hoping to catch a restock.
She said she’d buy two if she could — but knows she’d get caught.
“I don’t want to be embarrassed,” Londaiz, 50, said. “I think I’ll have to come back tomorrow — that’s the only way.”
Prices have started to drop in recent weeks, falling 16%, but complaints of illegal egg and poultry price gouging in New York have skyrocketed.
The New York Attorney General’s Office was hit with 151 complaints about inflated prices between Jan. 1 and March 10, an increase of more than 840% from last year.
The AG’s Office determines whether retailers are price gouging or if customers are dealing with sticker shock, and can slap businesses with penalties of up to $25,000 per violation — but has yet to issue any violations.
