The market, explained
What retail feature activity means
Retail feature activity is USDA's weekly count of how hard grocery stores are advertising eggs, reported as a feature rate, the share of sampled stores running an egg ad, and an activity index that counts the total store-features. It is a demand-side signal: heavy features usually go with ample, cheap supply, and features pull back when eggs get scarce and dear.
Updated Jul 13, 2026
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Retail feature activity is USDA's read on how hard grocery stores are advertising eggs in a given week, and it works as a demand-side signal to set against the price. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service samples grocery ads and reports two numbers. The feature rate is the share of sampled stores running an ad for any consumer grade of shell egg that week. The activity index counts the total features, so a chain advertising two sizes across 100 stores registers as 200. Together they measure how aggressively retailers are pushing eggs.
What a feature is
A feature is a store ad, the egg promotion in the weekly circular or the app that pulls shoppers in. Retailers feature eggs when it suits them, often as a loss leader to drive traffic, and eggs are a classic one because nearly every basket includes them. When stores lean into egg ads, the feature rate and activity index climb. When they pull eggs out of the ad rotation, both fall. The report turns all those individual circulars into two weekly numbers you can track.
Reading it against price
- National loose
Feature activity and the wholesale price tend to run against each other, which is what makes the pair useful. When supply is ample and the benchmark above is low, eggs are cheap to promote, so stores feature them hard and feature activity runs high. When a shock pushes the price up and supply tightens, retailers stop advertising eggs, because there is no reason to drive demand for a product that is short and expensive, and feature activity drops. So a falling feature rate alongside a rising price is the demand side pulling back from a tight market. Read the two together: price is the supply-and-cost signal, feature activity is what retailers are doing about demand.
A lead or a lag
Feature activity can run ahead of the shelf price or trail it, depending on what is driving the week. When a retailer plans a big egg promotion, features can show up while prices are still easing, a sign the store is pushing to move volume. When eggs turn scarce, features can vanish before the shelf price fully catches up, an early tell that retailers are backing off. That is why it reads as a companion to price rather than a substitute for it. The two together say more than either alone about whether a week is supply-driven or demand-driven.
Where to find it here
- Stores featuring
The chart above is the feature intensity for national large white eggs on this site: how many grocery stores ran a feature that week, summed across pack sizes, with the advertised carton price alongside. The Scramble tracks this for white and brown, conventional and cage-free, from USDA's weekly grocery-store egg feature report. Read the store count against the benchmark: heavy featuring usually means ample, cheap supply, and a falling count against a rising price is the demand side backing away from a tight market.
The Scramble reports USDA's feature figures as published. Feature activity is a demand-side description, not a forecast of price.