14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, 19 August 2024 — A candle with the number seven is all that Jean Carlos’ family has for the cake they need to celebrate his birthday this Tuesday. The shortage of eggs has caused a crisis in the private sweet shops that prepare the traditional cakes, made with brown sugar and meringue. On the black market in Havana, a carton of 30 eggs is close to 3,600 pesos, and “they don’t have them anywhere,” complains the child’s mother.
This Saturday, Jean Carlos’ grandmother paused all household chores after receiving a call: “They brought out eggs in La Época and people are taking them in quantities because they are 5.95 MLC (freely convertible currency) a carton,” a friend residing near the corner of Galiano and Neptuno streets in Central Havana alerted her. “Run and see if you can get any!”
Traditionally, when the product reaches the foreign exchange markets, a carton is sold above 10 MLC (equivalent to 2,750 pesos, according to the parallel exchange rate); hence the astonishment of the 69-year-old habanera. Between doubt and despair, she took her wallet and ran to Rancho Boyeros Avenue where, after waiting half an hour, she managed to find an almendrón. After paying 200 pesos, she arrived at the market, which was already surrounded by a crowd of people.
“By the time I arrived they had run out because people were buying cartons and cartons”
However, she had no luck. “By the time I arrived they had run out because people were buying cartons and cartons,” she says. Through the door of the foreign exchange store, customers loaded down with dozens of cartons were leaving, while the line to get in stretched along Neptuno Street, as verified by this newspaper. The frenzy of grabbing the product was such that, a couple of hours after the market opened, there weren’t any eggs left.
With a small red and yellow Endy label that revealed their origin in the Dominican Republic, the cartons looked somewhat dirty on the outside, as if they had been stored in a place with little hygiene. “They are very cheap; each egg comes out at less than 20 cents (from MLC), and I don’t know whether to get in line to buy them because they may not be fresh at all,” said a client who roamed around the store.
“The egg might contain a surprise, and that dirt on them makes me suspicious,” the woman added. Next to her, another potential buyer also expressed doubt: “At this price they must have been confiscated from some MSME, or maybe they’re in a hurry to get rid of them because they’ve been without refrigeration for days. I prefer not to risk it,” she said.
Others, more daring, chose to try their luck and take all the cartons they could carry and that their MLC cards allowed. The final destination of so much merchandise was not exactly the frying pans of their homes but resale. “Tomorrow we will see these eggs on San Rafael Street at 3,000 pesos per carton,” complained an employee of La Época. “But we haven’t been told to set a limit, so we have to sell all the cartons they ask for.”
The anxiety to acquire more and more was spurred on by the deficit of food sold in Cuban pesos on informal networks. The private businesses that sell sweets are the most affected by the shortage of the product, to the point that some have preferred to close until lower prices appear among the informal sellers.
In the neighborhood of Nuevo Vedado, an MSME dedicated to the preparation of cakes for weddings and birthdays has not been providing service for more than two weeks due to the lack of the essential ingredient. The place, next to Tulipán Street, has a loyal clientele among several neighbors in the area who can afford to pay the high prices of their sweets and cakes.
The owner of the candy store was excited about the sale at La Época, believing that the resellers were going to flood the market with new offers, but on Monday her frustration reached a higher level. “There’s nothing at all; it’s a mystery because everyone I’ve called keeps telling me that there aren’t any eggs left, that we have to wait. Where did all those cartons go?” she asks. Her hypothesis is that much of the product has already been sold directly to those who offer sweets through digital portals in foreign exchange.
“It gives them more business like this because there the prices are 25 dollars and up for a cake, and it is a quick way to get the product out without having to risk the eggs spoiling or having to offer them at retail on the street,” she says. One solution is to “buy egg powder to replace the fresh eggs, but it doesn’t work for all kinds of recipes,” she admits.
“We are not getting orders because we don’t have eggs,” the owner of the candy store warns several residents nearby who share a WhatsApp group. “We will let you know when we can make the cakes again, but at the moment we don’t have a reopening date,” said the entrepreneur, illustrating her message with the emoticon of a piece of cake.
The image of the appetizing sweet, like the candle with the number seven for Jean Carlos, is the closest thing to a birthday cake that those enrolled in the group – and a good part of the Cubans who suffer from the shortage of eggs – have seen in several days.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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