Helping Families Gain Stability
By Angie Matthiessen, Executive Director
For many of us, there's a favorite local restaurant that we repeatedly frequent – a favorite diner, a familiar chain, or even a fast-food stop. Mine is a quaint spot near my office where they serve the best quiche, infact I crave this quiche. I’m sure most of our go-to places are not fancy meals – just affordable, comforting staples we could count on. It really shocked me the other day, I stopped by my quaint café and there was a sign stating it was unexpectedly closed for the day due to staffing issues and they were adding a surcharge to any egg dishes on the menu.
It resonated when I saw the recent news about some restaurants charging extra per egg due to the national egg shortage. This is a local issue affecting our favorite businesses and trickling down to employees. And I thought about how something as small as an egg could quickly become trouble for families with little financial cushion.
It turns out, the bird flu has devastated the poultry industry, with over 145 million chickens culled since 2022 to stop its spread. The result? Egg prices have soared, hitting $4.94 per dozen this spring, and the USDA predicts another 20% increase this year. For many, that’s just another inconvenience. But for the 34% of households in our county that can’t make ends meet, it’s yet another hit to a fragile budget.
And if a struggling family tries to save money by switching to cereal instead of eggs? The price of cereal has jumped just as much – rising from around $6 to nearly $10 per family-sized box since the pandemic. To make matters worse, manufacturers have shrunk the box size while charging more, a trend now widely known as "shrinkflation."
I don’t blame the businesses for this – they’re facing rising costs themselves. But it’s just another hurdle for ALICE® (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) families with income above the Federal Poverty Level but less than the cost of essentials. ALICE works hard, often at more than one job, and still falls short. In fact, in Florida, a family of four with two adults working as a full-time personal care aide and stock worker/order filler – two common jobs – earns about $30,431.00 less than what’s needed just to cover basics like groceries.
And it’s not just certain jobs. Across our state, more than one third of workers in the 20 most common jobs – cashiers, cooks, janitors, delivery drivers – live in households that can’t afford the basics and are forced to make sacrifices just to get breakfast and other meals on the table.
That’s why we do what we do at United Way Charlotte County. Our mission is to help ALICE families gain financial stability and to keep them from slipping into poverty over something as simple as a rising grocery bill. Because for too many families, it’s not just an extra few cents per egg. It’s another crack in the fragile foundation they’re trying to stand on.
We love our small businesses and favorite restaurants in Charlotte County. It’s the life and blood of our community. We connect with them because they’re familiar and we care for them. The kindness of the wait staff who always seem to know our orders, and the sense of normalcy it gives us in often uncertain times.
That’s what stability feels like. That’s what we’re fighting for. Together, we can make it happen.
Discover how you can help build a brighter, more stable future for ALICE and for all. Start by exploring data and learn more about ALICE families in our community, please visit: unitedwayccfl.org/ALICE2025
For more information about United Way of Charlotte County’s mission: Mobilizing the power of our community to break the cycle of poverty, please contact Angie Matthiessen, Executive Director. She can be reached at director@unitedwayccfl.org.