Every day we see inflation hitting the products we buy, as consumer prices have soared almost 10 percent this year — but finally there is some good news: The price of chicken wings is down sharply.
The US Department of Agriculture — which monitors the price of chicken wings, among many other things — says wing prices aredown almost 50 percent to $1.68 a pound wholesale, a rare case of deflation.
So just as the NFL season is about to kick off, those prices are down to where they were before the pandemic.
Restaurants struggled, consumers switched their orders
Last year, prices got so high many restaurants took them off the menu, as patrons did not want to pay $14 for a small plate of wings.
It was one year ago that we visited a Cincinnati sports bar — Obryon's Bar and Grill— that was dealing with that soaring price of chicken wings.
The owner of O'Bryons, Jason Esterkamp, told us last yearthe same labor shortage hitting restaurants was hitting chicken processing plants, causing a shortage and soaring prices.
"All I can tell you is that wings are hard to come by, and they are extremely expensive. The chicken producers are having problems opening up their production lines" he told us last year.
But since then two things happened.
One, chicken production lines got back to almost normal operations.
More importantly, many restaurants and consumers stopped buying bone-in chicken wings because they got too expensive, switching to chicken fingers or other appetizers.
So with supply up, and demand down, 2022 prices have dropped to the pre-pandemic levels of 2018. Who knows, we may start seeing 50 cent wing nights again.
Unfortunately, the price of chicken breasts have yet to drop, as demand remains very high for them.
But the best news is that so you may be able to afford those chicken wings again this football season, so you don't waste your money.
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