The bacon, egg, and cheese, Brooklyn's most reliable economic indicator, now averages $6.85 at the borough's bagel shops, up 7 percent from last summer, according to an August survey of 45 shops from Greenpoint to Sheepshead Bay.

The index, compiled quarterly, found a plain bagel with cream cheese averaging $4.10, with the cheapest recorded at $2.75 in Bensonhurst and the most expensive at $6.50 at a Williamsburg shop the survey's authors describe only as "aware of what it is doing."

Owners point to a familiar trio of pressures: wholesale eggs up 11 percent year over year, commercial rents resetting after pandemic-era deals, and cream cheese, which one distributor called "quietly the most volatile commodity in the five boroughs."

"I held the line at $6 for two years and I felt like a hero," said Micah Rosen, whose family has run a bagel shop on Avenue M in Midwood since 1979. "Then my egg guy called, and now I'm at $6.75 and apologizing to people I've known since they were in strollers."

There is one bright spot in the data: the price of the bagel itself, unadorned, rose just a dime on average. Whatever else happens to breakfast, the floor is holding.