Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing — until the cost of one really sets you back.
This weekend, hungry New Yorkers looking to ring in Super Bowl 2022 with the finger-lickin’ favorite will need to shell out more cash for the greasy bites.
And it will take a wing and a prayer to find them at reasonable prices.
Nationwide, the cost of chickens rose 26% since the same time last year — with prepared bone-in wings increasing by 14% and boneless ones soaring by 26%, according to Crain’s.
In New York, the prices are worse. Michael Swanson, Wells Fargo’s chief agricultural economist, told the outlet it’s due to higher freight costs in a big city. Jarrod Fox, the founder of the TailGate sports bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said that he’s paying 50% more year-over-year for wings.
“We can’t pass it along entirely to the consumer, so we have to eat a good chunk of it,” Fox told Crain’s. “If you are selling chicken wings at $12.99 for eight wings, you can’t go to almost $20 for the same eight.”
The likely culprit: supply-chain issues, with inflation this week alone hitting another four-decade high as consumer prices grew 7.5% year-over-year — impacting the costs of rent, electricity and, in this case, food. In January, economists predicted that Super Bowl foods could cost up to 14% more in 2022 than they did last year.
But that only rubs hot sauce in a long-simmering wound. There’s been a chicken wing shortage since 2018 when an oversupply of wings forced a slowdown in production. In 2020, COVID-19 created the combination of a shortage of workers and a bursting demand for takeout. The cherry on top: a rare winter storm in Texas around this time last year that forced farmers to euthanize hundreds of thousands of chicks and destroy hundreds of thousands of eggs.
Even in Buffalo, New York, the home of the Buffalo wing, prices soared in 2021, as The Post previously reported.
But it isn’t just wings, either.
Guacamole, another sports-watching staple, will also cause shoppers problems this weekend. Avocados recently hit their highest prices on record, with the cost of a 20-pound box from the state of Michoacan in Mexico — the largest avo exporter — reaching $26.23 last week. That’s nearly $6.30 higher year-over-year.
Overall, proteins this year come at a much higher cost. However, despite the prices of avocados and other fruits, they’re a comparative bargain, as the price of all fruits and veggies grew by just 5% between December 2020 and December 2021.