MADISON, Wis. — Supplies for certain types of chicken cuts are tight, which makes things difficult for some restaurants like McGees Chicken in Madison and Sun Prairie.

What You Need To Know

  • Supply is short for certain cuts of chicken like wings and certain breast sizes

  • This could ultimately lead to prices of those products to go up

  • Demand, high feed cost, and COVID-19 processing slowdowns contributing to problem

“All the ordering right now is bad, but especially chicken wings,” said Esperdell McGee, owner of the restaurant.

McGee started McGees chicken out of his church parking lot seven years ago. Today supply issues are making chicken orders harder to fill for restaurants like his — and more expensive.

“My prices are the lowest in town and I don't want to raise the prices, but I'm being forced because now when I can get a case of chicken for $85, now it's costing me $145,” McGee said.

McGee said right now, they aren't even making money on wing orders.

“It's been hard,” McGee said. “Even the distributors, we're waiting, like right now I've got to pick up chicken and the chicken hasn't gotten there yet, so I drive all the way to Chicago or Milwaukee just to pick it up because that's the best price I'm going to get.”

There are a lot of reasons for the chicken supply issues, some of it is simply our collective appetite.

“Demand is certainly up a lot of people are cooking with chicken— cooking at home. Chicken is very convenient to cook. It also works well with the sort of fast food and takeout so there is a lot of demand there,” said Ron Kean, poultry extension specialist with the University of Wisconsin.

Kean said a growing demand for chicken wings and chicken sandwiches has met the supply chain issues that COVID-19 caused.

“I think supply may be slightly down, some of the processing issues of the last year have limited things a bit,” Kean said.

Processing plants are still slowed for COVID-19 precautions like social distancing. He said part of the issue too is the size of chicken available — five pound chickens are a good size for a chicken sandwich portion, but many produce bigger chickens than that for other food items.

Another part of the problem is grain and chicken feed price. Kean said increase cost to feed the chickens as producers are raising them limit production.

“People probably aren't growing extra chickens hoping there's a market there because grain prices and feed prices are high right now,” Keane said.

Keane said things will ramp up over the next year to meet demand, but that likely won't happen in the next six months.

“I doubt we'll see too many situations where there just plain isn't chicken,” Kean said. “What I think you'll see is the prices will go up. Maybe discount on some other chicken products.”

For instance, there might be a discount on boneless wings instead of traditional ones. 

McGee said price change is exactly what consumers should expect. He said that's easier to do for fast food chains than mom and pop restaurants, but he hopes people will be understanding.

“The stressful part for me is to elevate prices,” McGee said. “We started off not to do that, we wanted to keep it as low as possible because it's not about us making a million dollars, it's about us giving the consumer what they want.”