MEMPHIS, TN (abc24.com) - Chicken wing lovers need to shell out more bucks for the cluck. The price of poultry is sky high, and a spokesman for Tyson foods says it'll remain high for at least the next two years.
Chicken wings have always been a working man's idea of a pretty good dinner. They filled you up, they were a match made in heaven with beer or soda, and they didn't cost a lot.
Those days are over. Chicken wings are getting expensive.
According to Davis Boyd, owner of D'bo's Wings, "We're paying twice as much for product than we were at this time last year."
Twenty three years ago, Boyd and the woman who would become his wife were driving along, talking about outings they attended where chicken wings were sold. Boyd, a native of Memphis, decided to try to make a living from giving Memphis the bird.
He started small with one concession trailer at Winchester and Ross Road. Now, he has five locations; four are company-owned, and one franchise.
The trouble is the poultry industry is sort of acting like a chicken with its head cut off. Prices keep skyrocketing. In most businesses, when the prices go up for the business owner, that means the prices go up for the consumers. But the cost of chicken is so high right now that Boyd says there's no way he can make it up at the cash register.
"We're going to have to do something. We can't pass all of it on to consumers, obviously, because it's too astronomical, but we're going to have to have some type of price increase," he said. "There are going to be a lot of wing places closing down in this city if we can't get this thing in line some way."
The chicken wing is such a simple little thing, but it provides a living for David Boyd and his forty or so employees.
The working man's meal is normally served by working men and women. Their future means of making a buck now relies on the rising price of the cluck.
"They blame it on corn. They blame it on gas. They blame it on there's only two wings to a bird."
Boyd says he'll make it. His company is here to stay. But it's going to get tough; his profit margin is razor thin right now, and getting worse.
