It wasn't all that long ago when consumers could buy a carton of eggs for 99 cents.

That was before a shortage of eggs and egg products brought about by a bird flu virus that wiped out millions of chickens on commercial farms this spring.The H5N2 avian flu virus began showing up in Midwest commercial turkey and chicken farms this spring. To date, 48 million turkeys and chickens have died or were euthanized to prevent the virus from spreading further.Because of the egg crisis, the U.S. Department of Agriculture lowered its forecast for table egg production this year to 6.9 billion dozen, a 5.3 percent drop from 2014.The national chain Rita's announced this week that it will not serve custard until the shortage is over.By late May, the price for a dozen Midwest large eggs had soared 120 percent from mid-April, pre-bird flu prices to $2.62, industry analyst group Urner Barry said.Prices have begun to fall, but according to the Associated Press, officials say it could take up to two years to return to normal production."The best-case scenario, we're talking about a year before the availability is more robust," said John Howeth, the American Egg Board's senior vice president in charge of food service and egg product marketing.With little supply from the Midwest, egg producers on the East Coast like Heisler Egg Farm in Tamaqua have seen a rise in demand. Heisler Vice President Kent Heisler said that more buyers are turning to the local farm to maintain supply."We have customers that pull eggs from Michigan and Ohio but can't get them from there now, so they're turning to us for more," Heisler said.The egg farm, which ships its eggs to multiple grocery stores, restaurants, and wholesale markets in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, started to feel the rise in demand in the middle of May. However, Heisler said that it has not translated into a much larger profit. "There hasn't been that big a change in our profits. It's just part of the ups and downs of the business cycle," he said.Heisler's chickens were not affected by the flu, as it failed to move to the far eastern portion of the country. The farm continues to produce about 250,000 eggs daily.Local grocery retailers, such as Country Harvest Family Market in Palmerton, have also felt the trend.Chris Anthony, part-owner, said his store saw the big spike about four weeks ago, when the cost for a dozen large eggs went from about $1.70 to $2.99, and then that price held for the last three weeks.Anthony said the store buys all of its eggs from Heisler's, as it always tries to use local farms whenever it can."We saw that huge price increase, and what we did in retail is lowered our percentage markup to kind of soften the blow, so to speak," Anthony said. "So, basically we made the same pennies per dozen."If we would have done our normal percentage, eggs would have been close to $4 a dozen."Fortunately, Anthony said they saw a softening in the market. After two weeks of eggs spiking to almost double the price, the demand dropped, and Heisler's pricing dropped 30 cents a dozen across the board. Eggs dropped from $2.99 a dozen to $2.69."Honestly, I don't know where the egg market is going to go in the next few weeks," Anthony said.It isn't only retail stores that have felt the pinch.Restaurants such as the Bowmanstown Diner have felt the sting."Right now, we're just eating the price until we see what it tops out at," said Richard Wenner, owner. "We'll ride it out as long as we possibly can, but at some point, we're going to have to react to the marketplace."That's much the same philosophy shared by Tracey Downing, owner of Bert's Steakhouse in Palmerton."I haven't changed anything yet; just taking the bite," Downing said. "We use it a lot in baking because I bake a lot of homemade pies. We use eggs in our pancakes, and we sell a lot of pancakes. We go through over 100 dozen eggs a week."Thus far, Downing said, "We've been doing everything the same in eggs and omelets."It depends on how bad it's going to get; we haven't changed the prices or anything (even though) it's getting double of what it was," she said. "Hopefully it drops back down."The Associated Press and Dylan Messerschmidt contributed to this report.