Owner Olive Tabor said the Dunedin business used up to 1500 egg whites each week to make enough batter for its waffle cones, but its supplier had not been able to keep up with demand for the past two weeks.
"We hand-roll our large waffle cones and taco shells.
"That’s what Patti’s and Cream is known for — we’ve got a waffle iron in the front window."
Ms Tabor said last weekend, staff tried to use the smaller children’s cones which are bought in, but it proved to be "so tricky" making adult-sized double-scoop ice creams with them.
So she had been "raiding" local supermarkets for as many ice cream cones as she could get her hands on.
"I think I’ve bought about 150 packets, but they’re not waffle cones."
She said there had been a lack of egg whites in New Zealand for several months now, but she was surprised when her orders for them stopped coming.
"We’ve kind of been bouncing in and out all summer, of almost running out, but then we’ve just been able to get through.
"We’ve also been trying to stockpile the egg whites in our production kitchen so we don’t run out.
"We didn’t think we would actually run out."
She said hand-separating egg yolks from the whites took a lot of time and man-power — too much to create the 1500 needed for creating waffle cones.
As it was, using egg-whites supplied in bags required several people, working in shifts to make enough cones each week.
The situation did not appear to be doing any damage to her business yet, but if supplies did not resume soon, it could, she said.
As for when the egg-white supply would resume, she did not know.
"We’ve got our fingers crossed at the moment.
"We’re really at the mercy of the supply chain. A lot of food businesses will be in a similar situation.
"It’s quite sad, not to be able to do waffle cones, but people are still coming in the doors.
"They’ve been really understanding which is really appreciated, because we are really trying."
Ms Tabor said the good news was she had hand-separated about 80 eggs so she could make ice cream taco shells for Easter.
"Our tacos are hugely popular and this weekend we’ll be making Easter Smash flavoured tacos, with speckled egg M&Ms and toppings.
"People love it, so we decided we can’t not have Easter tacos.
"So we made 150 of them by hand for this weekend."
