PHILADELPHIA - Peter Skiadas is an immigrant who sells omelettes at Hank's Place, a roadside diner in Chadds Ford, Pa. Charles Pizzi sells batches of Butterscotch Krimpets as chief executive of Tasty Baking Co. in Philadelphia. Both have a common enemy.

Rising egg prices are beating down profits and pocketbooks.

A catalytic rise in the cost of eggs over the last year, fueled by soaring energy costs, expensive chicken feed and what some call a general food crisis, is battering the bottom lines of brunch operations and big-scale bakers like the makers of TastyKake sweets.

Tasty Baking last week said egg prices were partly to blame for its $1 million loss in the first quarter.

The spiraling price has left businesses scrambling for a way to cope with the culinary cost crisis.

"I'm thinking seriously to create new sources of buying eggs straight from the chicken farms," said Skiadas, 73, who said eggs have gone from 83 cents a dozen wholesale to $1.75 a dozen over the last six months or so.

The owners of Talluto's Authentic Italian Foods in Folcroft, Pa., who use 1,500 pounds of fresh eggs a week for ravioli, cavatelli and other fresh-frozen pasta, imposed price increases in February, in part because of high egg prices.

"It's absolutely becoming a concern because your customers obviously don't want a price increase," said Angel Storti, of Talluto's.

On the retail level, a dozen eggs in March cost $2.20 - 34.8 percent more than in March 2007, when they sold for $1.63, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

When you're using eggs by the thousands, this translates into a lot of lost greenbacks.

"We continued to feel the impact of industry-wide commodity increases as the cost of ingredients and packaging rose by $2 million dollars compared to the same period a year ago," Tasty's Pizzi said during a call with analysts.

A third of that $2 million, company officials said, came from increased egg costs.

Tasty Baking goes through 75,000 pounds of fresh egg products a week, or 4.8 million pounds a year, said Chad Ramsey, who handles investor relations for the company.

Tasty has also been grappling with expensive flour and oil, whose prices have skyrocketed over 18 months for some of the same reasons egg prices are soaring. TastyKakes are more expensive at the store - and more price hikes in the hopper.

The story is similar at Hank's, where Skiadas is overseeing a 10-day shutdown while workers expand the small eatery on Route 1.

Skiadas, 73, said the diner goes through more than 2,400 eggs a week. So far, he's held back on raising prices.

But he's considering a 10-percent increase on menu prices - and maybe shopping for eggs closer to home.

"I'm thinking in the future of going up to the (Pennsylvania) Dutch country and to find people that are raising chickens and they produce their own eggs," Skiadas said. "That way, perhaps, I might get 15, 20 cents less a dozen."

Ronald Rohrer of Westfield Egg Farm in Lancaster County, Pa., said prices are up because the cost of chicken feed - corn, grain, soybeans - has gone through the roof because of supply. More farmland is being used to grow corn for biofuels such as ethanol rather than wheat, soybeans or corn.

But the largest and most efficient egg producers, such as Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. of Mississippi, are cashing in.

Cal-Maine profits rose nearly $40 million, or 229 percent, in the three months that ended March 1 compared with the same quarter last year.

Analyst Mitch Pinheiro, who monitors Tasty Baking for Janney Montgomery Scott L.L.C. in Philadelphia, said wholesale buyers can't negotiate and lock in prices for eggs as they do with flour because eggs are not traded in the futures markets.

That means prices are set from day to day. If feed costs begin to outstrip profit, he said, things could get worse.

"It could happen that egg farmers decide the margins aren't big enough, the costs are rising so fast that they decide to limit the amount of eggs that they actually produce," he said.