With egg prices soaring, New York bodegas are asking if liquid eggs can save the bacon, egg, and cheese.
March 31, 2025
Illustration by João Fazenda
Fernando Mateo, a co-founder of United Bodegas of America, has been worried about the future of the venerable staple known as the bacon, egg, and cheese. It used to go for two or three dollars, but costs have spiked. “We kept thinking, What can we do to bring down the prices?” he said on a recent Wednesday, as he set out to take a casual egg census in the Bronx. Amid avian-flu outbreaks and soaring egg prices, he wanted to spread the word about a U.B.A. policy shift: swapping out fresh eggs for liquid ones, the kind that come in a carton. “When you go on a cruise ship, that’s what they give you,” he said, trying out his spiel at his first stop, La Bonita Grocery, at 183rd and Ryer. He pointed to a plastic tub of eggs, packaged three to a baggie, on the counter—another U.B.A. initiative. “Bodegas have figured it out,” he said. “The same way we’re breaking up a carton of eggs and selling them as loosies—that’s the way we look at this. We don’t need rocket scientists.” Ana Villalona, the store’s owner, nodded in agreement.
In recent months, B.E.C. discourse had been feverish. Bodegas were charging as much as six or eight dollars a sandwich. The usual two eggs had become one, and citizens reported that the bacon was shrinking, too. The B.E.C. was becoming a bread-forward affair, with the feel of rations. Vegans were circling, hawking mung-bean alternatives. Traffickers at the border were hiding eggs under blankets. On Fox News, the Secretary of Agriculture talked up back-yard hen-keeping. Charges of price gouging—originally levelled at industrial farmers—were creeping into the sandwich space.
Mateo, who is sixty-seven and wore a puffer vest over a black shirt and jeans, is a systems thinker. “You have to become a real businessman,” he said. “You have to have vision.” A product of Catholic boarding schools, he “grew up with priests and nuns—very strict, very, very rigid.” At fourteen, he dropped out of school to work at an East Village baby-furniture store called Schneider’s. He built a flooring business, then a money-wiring empire; since 2007, he’s been a partner at a securities firm. He lives between Miami, Westchester, and the Upper West Side. In 2021, he made a late bid for mayor, as a Republican. “I lost in the primaries against Curtis Sliwa, who’s a jerk idiot,” he said. “If I had won, I would have beat Adams.”
U.B.A., Mateo explained, is an opt-in organization; its other recent initiatives have included firearms training and the procurement of behind-the-counter panic buttons. Although competition among storekeepers can be fierce, Mateo sees U.B.A. as a marketplace of ideas.
He got in his black Silverado and drove across town, to Pamela’s Green Deli, where he greeted Radhamés Rodríguez, the bodega’s owner and the president of U.B.A. Catching sight of individually bagged slices of avocado, priced at a dollar, Mateo praised his friend’s innovation.
Rodríguez nodded. “They ask, ‘Can you sell me a little portion of lettuce and tomato?’ ” he said. “Three dollars, and that’s it. They make their own salad.”
The phone rang: a hundred and fifteen B.E.C.s ordered by a nearby school. A lanky line cook smiled. Pamela’s was already using liquid eggs, and the cook started pouring puddles of the stuff onto the hot griddle. Offered a sample, Mateo shook his head. “I try not to eat carbs,” he said. Rodríguez gave him a few Lotto tickets on the way out.
Locals aren’t completely sold on the switch to liquid eggs. “That’s like cheating the community,” a man named Quaison Richardson told a TV news reporter. “If I’m going to pay for an egg sandwich, I want an egg. I want you to crack the egg.” U.B.A. is insisting that the taste is the same, but the liquid eggs that La Bonita and Pamela’s are using are composed mostly of whites, with seasoning and xanthan gum to imitate yolky warmth. The resulting B.E.C.s have a pale, spongy heft.
The next stop was the Yankee One Deli, whose owner wanted to talk security. There had been egg lootings at other stores, he said, but not at his place, though a guy had recently tried to make off with two hams. (He’d dropped one at the door.)
Near Crotona Park, Mateo pulled up to a bodega called J.J.N. Corp. One of the store’s workers, David Evangelista, had an egg-scarcity story. Two customers, a man and a woman, were standing in line. There were only two eggs left, visible in the deli case. The woman ordered two eggs on a roll, and the man got upset: couldn’t they go one and one? The woman started yelling. She got both of the eggs, and the man, grumbling, ordered a ham and cheese, but stormed out before it was ready. “He said, ‘I don’t want no sandwiches from you!’ ” Evangelista said, shaking his head. “And now Easter is coming.” ♦
