The nation’s biggest egg marketplace doesn’t own hens, farms, or processing plants.

From an office building in New Hampshire, roughly a dozen people facilitate the trading of billions of eggs a year, a task that shapes what Americans pay per dozen at the supermarket or for omelets at diners.

The Egg Clearinghouse, or ECI, is little known outside the industry: It operates an online marketplace that allows participants to place bids on eggs listed for sale and see the results of trades. Only ECI members—farmers and egg buyers—are allowed to trade.

Lately, there are a lot more buyers than sellers using the “Wall Street of Eggs” with bird flu roiling the poultry market. And that is after last year marked the company’s busiest, trading over 2.6 billion shell eggs and 39 million pounds of egg products valued at more than $600 million.

ECI represents a sliver of the broader egg market—less than 5%—but plays a crucial role in providing eggs for those in need or having trouble getting them and how they are priced.

“If you’re short on eggs, we’re the marketplace,” said Alan Munroe, president of ECI, a company overseen by U.S. egg producers and buyers. “We fill in the gaps.”

The brisk business comes as egg prices are scorching many Americans. Consumers on average are paying about $5 a dozen, a record high and double the price from roughly a year ago, according to the Labor Department. Supermarkets and other large-volume buyers are paying about $7 a dozen, making egg sales in some cases a money-losing proposition.

Demand has remained steady despite the high sticker prices, prompting some restaurants to add surcharges for egg dishes and consumers to step up purchases of liquid eggs or substitutes.

The deadliest outbreak of avian flu in history has resulted in the death of more than 100 million U.S. chickens, turkeys and egg-laying hens since 2022, according to the Agriculture Department. Once infections are identified in a single bird on a farm, whole flocks are often eliminated to prevent further spread, creating supply shortages in some regions and grocery stores.

For years, egg industry competitors relied on researchers to visit wholesale markets to set pricing benchmarks.

Egg producers and buyers set up ECI as an alternative way to price and trade the commodity versus larger exchanges that operated in New York and Chicago. ECI began brokering trades in 1971, and its board was made up of industry executives, including Fred Adams Jr., the founder of the largest U.S. egg producer, Cal-Maine.

Similar to the stock exchanges, ECI doesn’t set a price for eggs. “The buyers and sellers determine the price; on our end, we just facilitate that,” Munroe said.

The clearinghouse’s data helps research firms such as Expana set industry benchmark prices because ECI provides a window into the market not typically available, said Karyn Rispoli, managing editor of the egg division at Expana.

Most of the roughly 110 billion eggs laid by U.S. hens are contracted to commercial customers, ending up in places such as a Kroger supermarket, a Waffle House or a hotel breakfast buffet. Terms of those contracts aren’t public.

Through ECI, a buyer can bid for truckloads of eggs at a particular price. A farmer with eggs for sale responds with an offer. ECI collects a one-cent commission per dozen eggs it trades, regardless of whether the price is $2 or $8.

All trades are blind, and only after a deal does ECI allow the parties to know each other’s identity.

Egg trading is unique. Prices for hogs, corn, wheat, soybeans, cattle, and even boxes of frozen beef are traded on markets run by CME Group. Few major food commodities rely on a little-known exchange service to determine their value.

A nearly 40-year veteran of the Egg Clearinghouse, Munroe was hired while working as a bank manager. One of the company’s past presidents walked in and started depositing checks from egg farmers and offered him a job after learning that Munroe had spent his childhood working on an egg farm.

Munroe said when he became ECI president three years ago, the egg market was relatively balanced. On any day, there were about 50 farmers offering eggs and around 60 bids for them.

One day in early February, Munroe said there were roughly 10 suppliers offering eggs and 200 bids from buyers.

“I think some people run off and think that everyone’s price gouging,” said Munroe.

Bird flu has spurred a scramble to source eggs. Food distributors that sell to restaurants and grocery stores are using ECI to buy eggs to fill existing orders. An egg producer could also use ECI to source eggs to fill a customer shipment.

Demand is typically higher in the winter and spring as grocery stores and food companies stock up for holiday baking and Easter. Farmers shifting production toward specialty egg varieties, such as cage-free, have further tightened supplies, according to a lender CoBank.

Egg producers such as Glenn Hickman, chief executive of Hickman’s Egg Ranch in Arizona, said ECI helps him find buyers for the extra jumbo eggs that his six million hens produce.

He also has been a buyer himself. After Hickman’s flocks were hit by bird flu last November, he bought eggs from ECI to help fill orders. He was buying again after his operation was hit by another infection in January.

“Since our farm got hit with bird flu, I’m bidding almost daily,” he said.