The cost of eating away from home has increased at least 0.4 percent for 25 of the last 27 months! Are you doing anything about that? 
For 25 of the last 27 months (blue highlights not all shown, 2 exceptions in yellow) the monthly increase in the cost of eating out has risen at lest 0.4 percent.
CPI Year-Over-Year Spotlight Food
Food Away From Home Year-Over-Year
- For 29 consecutive months dating to May of 2021, the year-over-year cost of eating out has risen at least 4.0 percent.
- For 24 consecutive months dating to October of 2021, the year-over-year cost of eating out has risen at least 5.3 percent.
- For 22 consecutive months dating to December of 2021, the year-over-year cost of eating out has risen at least 6.0 percent.
Tips Not Factored In
Tips are not factored into the CPI.
In my experience, the default tip rate on kiosks is rising as well.
What are You Doing in Response?
Rent is Hugely Problematic
For discussion of rent and other CPI components, please see CPI Rises More Than Expected as Rent Jumps Another 0.6 Percent
Krugman Says “We Won the War on Inflation at Very Little Cost”
Meanwhile, given that nobody eats, pays for gasoline, or needs shelter, Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman Says “We Won the War on Inflation at Very Little Cost”
If one is an idiot, one’s favourite “expert” can no doubt explain that hs arbitrary index isn’t affected by that, since “studies” show that people are now “choosing” to substitute spat-out chewing gum off of sidewalks, instead of restaurant meals. After all, eating spat-out chewing gum is eating. And sidewalks are out. “Oh, I understand!”, say the idiots. While hurrying out to demonstrate how “smart” they now are at “economics”, by loudly regurgitating the nonsense with great confidence, to everyone around them who they wish to impress. After all, since the “experts” say so, mindlessly aping them must surely mean we are smart as well!
Most certainly have cut back in a number of ways. One is that I no longer spend $5 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks that costs me a quarter to roast and brew myself. Sit-down meal are much rarer than they were.
It’s always cheaper to eat at home than to eat in a restaurant, where you pay for the cooks, the servers, and the building. But the gap has widened a lot, so much more food at home. A few weeks ago, on a road trip, I paid $15 at a McDonald’s for two cheeseburgers, two small fries, and two soft drinks that, when inflation is included, would’ve cost $10 if priced the same as when I was a kid.
As for “Cisco” don’t make me laugh. Sysco has been around for a long time. Same for the idiotic rants about food quality, which remains the same. And fructose in the Coke, as if that hasn’t been going on for a long time. The issue is the prices, which have greatly outstripped the rise in the overall CPI. Oddly enough, we can afford the prices, but I feel like a sucker when breakfast for 2 is $50 before the tip.
I haven’t noticed restaurants closing, but stay tuned. I can say this: We live in an area where the population is growing, but I haven’t seen any new ones opening.
I don’t go out at my expense except rarely. I can afford it but I am too cheap. I don’t even eat subsidized cafeteria food at work. If my company wants to take use out that is fine but that does not happen often.
My wife & I live in the Orlando area. We rarely eat out these days although there are many decent restaurants around us. We were out over the weekend and decided to stop at a popular BBQ place for lunch. When it was all said and done, $40 for BBQ sandwiches, fried, baked beans, and soft drinks. Food was terrific, but expensive.
We normally shop at local Publix supermarket. I asked neighbor that has 3 little kids how she is able to feed them all. She said that she shops a lot at Aldi as their prices are much cheaper than Publix. Aldi’s price for a gallon of milk is $2.95 vs. $4.85 at Publix. Aldi’s produce is cheaper, but some items you have to buy a whole bag (lemons) instead of picking just one that you can do at Publix.
We rarely eat out. Occasionally we’ll go out for pizza or chinese. I’m an excellent cook and my husband is an excellent grill master. We go to the Amish in Shipshewana to get most of our meat. I’m tired of all the “surcharges” they add at restaurants. They even expect a tip when you carry out.
LOL I eat out when I want to or can’t be bothered to make time for cooking/prepping food myself. If you don’t like not eating out so much, just go get a better higher paying job, that’s the right’s mantra, lift yourself up from wherever you are, no excuses.
Yes, in the USA.
The add-ons (living wage kitchen staff supplement) drive me crazy.
20% tip is now standard?
Wine prices are obscene. Then, you get to add sales tax, fee, tip. For us, this means $62 minimum.
No, in Europe (Italia, France, België).
The price is the price.
Wine prices are quite reasonable. €25 for a good bottle.
Three things that I’ve noticed over the last two years.
1. Higher prices at restaurants and fast food/convenience eating
2. Lower quality meats and ingredients being used across the board.
3. Smaller portions everywhere
For me, 2 and 3 really kill the dining experience. If you’re going to charge me more due to higher prices, don’t slap me in the face with lower quality inputs and smaller portions. Raise prices enough to maintain the same quality/portions. Otherwise, I won’t patronize your place of business.
It’s the same thing to me with shrinkflation, stop making every item smaller while raising prices.
Before you know it, the club sizes for cereal/oatmeal etc will be the same as the regular supermarket weight while they still promote it as “family size”.
People aren’t that stupid.
Restaurant portions in the US are absurd. My wife and I have always shared an entree. These days, more often than not, we share an entree and take half home with us.
Sadly, more and more crap served as restaurants try to keep prices down, I want real fish and chips, not fishsticks out of a freezer bag….
So from this informal poll I counted 7 who said they eat out more and I counted 9 who eat out less and 3 that responded that restaurants are super busy.
I was surprised by the results, I was expecting 20% to say yes they eat out more and 80% to say they eat out less because that’s usually how it goes but it’s fairly even.
I spent the month of September travelling in Europe. Ate out the entire month. Great food.
Interesting comments about it being quiet in Ireland. I did not go there. Mainland Europe was the busiest I have ever seen. Tourists and locals everywhere. It was often difficult to find seating at many restaurants, cafes, etc. It was also much hotter than usual for September.
Yes, eating in or eating out is getting more expensive. Life’s necessities; food, energy, shelter, will always be in demand. And people of limited income will complain, but pay up. However, based on the crowds of tourists in Europe, there remains a lot of people with the wherewithal to travel and spend a lot. I did not hear anyone complaining about prices the entire time I was there.
Which countries did you visit?
Spain, France, Italy, Greece. Two couples. The wives planned everything, as usual. They did a pretty good job.
Nice. Which did you enjoy the most?
Loved it all. I enjoy travelling, particularly if someone else does all the planning.
One place I was not aware of before was St. Michael’s cave in Gibraltar. Very cool.
hercules cave on morocco coast was stupendous too. i vote in italia. those bastards over there, hide 1/3 of economy from the government. i have prayed for amerikans to someday be this smart. i love that italians didn’t even fight for mussolini and hitler. they all surrendered to the amerikans……….italians did their EVIL EMPIRE phase of existence long ago. the Pax Dumbfuckistan is crumbling and most amerikans too dumb to even enjoy the ride down……………..pack a lunch Papa, it will be a long slow fun enjoyable ride……………..like a flume ride………
Thanks! I will mention it to my wife so she can include it in our next travel plan!
I have visited them all for work and pleasure. Gilbralter I have not seen but I have seen many places near it. Europe is a moveable feast.
Yes. Very good food all through Europe. I have never been disappointed when I travel there.
yes Papa, you speak the truth, as usual. every place i have travelled in europe mexico and canada and usa past year the restaurants and hotels packed. here in NYC, which is a tourist town, it’s mobbed………with folks on holiday, all smiling and consuming food and pleasure……………besides the marauding armies of murderers. come and visit. don’t move here. in fact, move out.
Sounds like a marvelous time.
Sadly my travel agent of many, many years has passed on and I’m finding she appears to be impossible to replace.
Restaurant food is expensive and often unhealthy, seems like easy decision.
“With the cost of eating out rising rapidly, are you eating out less, more, or about the same as a year ago?”
Great question Mish, and one my Wife and I have discussed at length of late. We have definitely chosen to Eat Out far less (from 3-4 wk to 1 mth) over the past 3 years. We made some personal decisions that played into that decision, for full disclosure (we quit drinking alcohol).
We have noticed that traffic is way down (New England) around our area, when we do venture out. We have also noticed far less groups and more couples or 3-4 people out together. Another notice is far fewer younger people over the past few months. We attribute this to the following for our area anyway.
1. Cost (many say)
2. Rent & Loan payments coming back (responsible say)
3. Conversations (Politics and MSM have decimated it)
4. Low on List of things to do (now).
5. Learned to Cook & Bake during Covid
6. Newer activities allow us to bring our own food
7. Found ourselves together more often and loving it
8. Fewer events going on that we seem to be interested in
9. Found Nature, Music, and Trail walking much better
10. Grandkids now and they are much more Fun at home
Funny thing is, that once we slowed it down to a crawl, we no longer miss it as a normal activity, but it is now back to “A Treat” which is what it used to be for us. Loving it!!!
Good Evening from Bangkok Mish. We rarely eat out because the cost is ridiculous. Bangkok was formerly considered a fairly inexpensive place to live and eat out. Not anymore. I am retired, and my income is US Social Security and whatever I can earn from dividends and interest income. They rarely offset the decline in the portfolio value. Even eating at home isn’t cheap. My food costs per month are not 20 times what they were when I moved here in 1985.
We haven’t changed our restaurant habits at all. After the initial surge prices feel like they have stabilized. We live in France so there is no tipping, just a bill with taxes and everything included which certainly makes things easier. A pizza place opened up recently in our town and we ordered a pizza to be delivered and when I tried to tip the delivery man he refused saying that he has a salary and that if his employer found out he was accepting tips he would be fired. One other thing I found out was that the local butcher is now cheaper and has better cuts and variety than the big chain supermarket we usually go to. We also have an open-air market once a week and I noticed especially the seafood has become cheaper and fresher than the supermarket also. I should point out that I live just outside of Paris so competition is fierce and the consumers have money. Together that puts downward pressure on prices.
Well, the cost of all the inputs are rising including wages, so the sell price is going to have to go up too. The profit margin on prepared food is not all that high, there is only so much that can be done to keep prices down by cutting margins.
I have to say that I’m experiencing something different here in Southern California. Half of my friends eat out all of the time. Not at the usual, nationally recognized places. I’m talking about $40-80/meal with craft drinks for$20 each. It’s insane to me and my wife. I’m sitting in a hotel room now typing this. We decided to go to a cheaper place tonight and spent $80 for the 4 of us while our other friends went to the “nicer place.” We guess we would have spent $400 for the four of us easily.
Anyways, last weekend we went to Vegas for the same friend and eat out each place with very similar prices every place we went. Nothing is cheap anymore. But we still did it and we still are. After this weekend we plan to eat at home for a month straight being tight as usual.
BTW, Friday nights are usually 45min waits everywhere you go starting at 6pm
Have I cut back on eating out?
Yes.
I love easy questions.
Next week’s menu starts off with beef stroganoff, crock pot version.
We still eat out. Lucky enough to live by some remote casinos. One has $25 all you can eat prime rib and shrimp and the prime rib is restaurant quality unlike some other places. I usually eat 3 on avg around 16oz lol.
Then theres steaknshake. If you split a bottle of water you can get 2 double combos for $14. The burgers are thin but taste really good and unless your starving they do the trick. I like the order kiosk its easy to avoid confusion asking for what you want on it and you can add extras for free.
We have cut back on the higher priced places and rarely order alcohol. I have a real problem paying $5 for something i paid less than 20 for at home for 12.
And if you havent tried it…Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat Beer from Kansas City. Thank me later. Or curse me for your new addiction lol.
So over the last 2 years food away from home is up about 12%? OMG the humanity. Doesn’t deter me at all.
The family owned restaurants in my town still have lines out the door. That more than anything else is reducing my dining out.
I am, however, feeling inflation at the grocery store, so I’m no longer making political and alumni donations.
The only fast food place I eat at is Five Guys. I’m always amazed at how consistent their quality is. Fresh buns, fresh vegetables, good quality beef. One burger is filling enough; no need for the fries.
Somehow my local place has kept the price of a cheeseburger to “only” $9.69. It’s up to $11.69 in Times Square.
Last sit down restaurant I ate at was a mom and pop Greek restaurant. Food was good, but expensive for what it was.
Interesting.
I have never spent $9.00 for a cheeseburger and I never will.
I just may get hungry.
In Warsaw I get a great bacon cheeseburger with fries and a half liter tap local Polish beer ice cold for less than that
Remember, inflation is dropping. Don’t pay any attention to the cost of food and related services. Does anyone believe the government bs inflation numbers?
Food doesnt count. What a joke they are. Were the ones on the ground and they lie to our faces.
nope. mish reports on the .GOV numbers. it’s madness. everyone’s life is different. we all know what is expensive in our own lives. i walk. don’t drive. so i’m sensitive to price of kick ass restaurants within a 3 mile roundtrip……….about 200 mom and pop ethnic restaurants. no chains. manhattan for that slop.
Nope not me whatesoever
I work in a national chain sit down restaraunt. Despite a lovely dining area, and lovely banquet rooms, about 40% of the revenue comes from carryout. People want all the food, but are avoiding tipping and expensive alcohol. Carry out probably gives them what they want at half the price.
“With the cost of eating out rising rapidly, are you eating out less, more, or about the same as a year ago?”
I am eating out way more but i don’t eat at chains. I prefer mom & pop restaurants and preferably ethnic/regional food from India, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia/Indonesia, Middle East, or any Michelin rated restaurant.
I was at a South American place that specializes in meat pastries and it was jam packed. Most of the mom & pops are full and the chains are empty. I suspect as the demographics change in America so too will the restaurant matrix.
Then again, older people are skipping their Olive Garden & Cracker Barrel visits…
link to cnn.com
The dip is coming at a time when Cracker Barrel’s traffic is down across the board.
“Our traffic declines were broad-based. They were against all of the age cohorts,” Cochran said, but pointed out that “the younger cohort held up better than the over 65.” Other chains, like Burger King, have also reported a dip in restaurant traffic as customers pull back due to higher prices.
Darden Restaurants (DRI), which owns Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen and others, noted during an analyst call Thursday that it, too, is seeing declining visits from older customers.
And this will continue and even accelerate as the Mom & Pop ethnic joints can hire ppl off the books while the chain restaurants are stuck paying the higher min. wage, especially in California.
Some even hire sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, and the pay scale is different.
Our experience in Florida is same as yours. Eating in local mom and pop places and very rarely eat at chains (a handful of times a year). In fact we can often get dining service for the same price as McDonalds (ie a burger at a sit down place the same as a quarter pounder meal that costs ~10 bucks).
I think the reason mom and pops are full is because their costs are cheaper. They can still pay wait staff 5 bucks an hour because they make their money on tips while chains have to pay 15 hr. Plus of course those mom and pops often employ family members which further keeps down the price. Plus the taste of the food is generally better too.
Chain restaurants are all about ‘economies of scale’ which means huge contracts for huge bulk quantity of “food” to be served/processed as fast as possible for maximum profit. To appeal to the most amount of people, the bulk food is usually bland, flavorless and tasteless.
There was an Italian/pizza restaurant here that everyone loved, they got popular and opened three new restaurants then we noticed the food quality went down. We later saw one of the manager carrying a Sysco logo clipboard and we understood exactly what happened. I don’t blame the owners, they had a restaurant with great success because of their “home made” flavor but it’s impossible to scale that for four restaurants without having a “partner” to bulk order food.
The restaurants struggled for a while and I think they all shutdown. The combo of post covid + quantity (not quality) killed them. We have an inside joke that we call “they got sysco’ed” to refer a decline or shutdown in the restaurant.
This is what happens when the managers please the shareholders and not the customers.
the brazilian meat restaurants are ridiculous for meat lovers. so cheap too here in brooklyn.
Brazilian tenderloin is purchased by the 55 gallon barrel. Canned meat avoids the import tax.
On our way back from the Chapada to Bom Jesus da Lapa, we stopped at a roadside restaurant in Tanque Nova. We sat down to a table and they brought us a liter of cold coke and two glasses. They served up two large bowls of hot rice and beans and small salads of diced tomato, cucumber and onions in oil and vinager. Then they brought us a sizziling platter of beef slices cut off a kebab stick, chicken drum sticks and spice pork sausages.
Price for both of us was 47 reais …..almost $10 US ….
I dont think it will break the bank….
price on the streets in my hood seem the same as where you are. all you haters here who hate NYC. stay away. i see at least a murder a day, and there are marauding mexicans and jihadis and jews…………raping and pillaging. stay away. i’m happy the metropolis of 20million lost half a million. i hope another million or two leave……….let em go to TX and FL etc………………it’s scary here. don’t come.
t most likely cost 50c to make that rice for you
And the Coke had sugar and not fructose.
I live in Massachusetts and I’m shocked at the restaurant prices. So yes, I’m cutting back. BTW, the same applies to other parts of the world I often travel to, in Western and Eastern Europe. Examples of places I found perfectly affordable, at least for now: South Korea and Japan.
Eastern Europe is much less expensive I have a place in central Warsaw lots of great food for a lot less than in NY or Boston that’s for sure
I don’t do restaurants any more.
inflation has been cumulative, been saying that for decades. all mish posts about recession or deflation is preposterous. travel and hotels…..booming by the gross numbers of companies in the business. boomers are rich and have time to travel now. i was in lower manhattan today. more damn tourists than ever, even with the supposed day of jihad or whatever nonsense the mass media scares folks with. i ate in a great french bistro for breakfast and was ridiculously great and i though cheap at 25 bucks tip included. restaurants packed in brooklyn. nyc ethnic food is so damn great and so reasonable. we have 2 chefs in the household, and it’s expensive to dine in, if one wants quality too. i don’t see any slowdown in gotham, but this is a big world. i’ve lived in lots of places, and the differences are always profound how places are affected. i might add, the printed money does arrive in NYC with the grifters at FED owners here, like JPM and C etc…………print give to bankers, then to military industry, and proceed to bomb and underwrite bombing from ukraine to palestine to syria and on and on………………RON PAUL was right. about the fed and wars and bankers and military. PS. the NYPD was out by the thousands today. it’s a police state to guard the imperial cities of DC NYC. the evil empire’s heart beat. i still am shocked at idiots that still vote D or R for president, senate or house. democracy works. nitwits elect nitwits.
TT,
Do you live there? I was talking to corp raider a few years ago that lived in Manhattan. I asked him if he could grill at his apt. He said no, some rule against it. Assuming just the building but not sure. What kind of city is that where you can’t grill a steak at your house…meh.
kings county. brooklyn. house with yard. we even grew big crop of marijuana and grill, but the immigrant serfs grill on all the streets in my hood. so i buy their’s usually. quality and great flavors and meats……..and helping hard workers out………. putzes that cannot grow what they want are really not free. grow weed. be free.
It’s common for multi story buildings to ban outdoor grills on balconies. You just wind up setting off the smoke detectors in your upstairs neighbor’s unit.
Smedley Butler told us in 1935 – ‘War is a Racket’.
“The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.”
Around here not much has changed. People love fast food. Especially in rural poor towns that I pass through spanning a couple southern states. This one McDonald’s in one of the poorest towns always has a line, even late at night. Fascinating.
Personally, My spouse and I stopped eating out after the facade covid hysteria and the late night ballot counting for days on end. We checked out. 95% of our food is from local farms. We could eat out every night but we find our cooking is far superior than even 4-5 star places. We do still eat out at a couple of local higher in places but it is now a major letdown. Our cooking has gone up several notches. Unless it’s a 5 star place rather stay home.
We’re eating out less because of higher prices but also because of declining quality. The quality of food compared to 4-5 years ago seems to be much worse. Since I started cooking more during Covid I find that my cooking is better than 90% of the restaurant food, so why waste the money?
We eat pi much less. Married to an incredible home cook and she tells me it irritates her greatly to pay 60 bucks out for a steak dinner we can make at home fo a third of the price… And it’s 3 times as good.
I’m on a more fixed income and scoffed at the fake and manipulated inflation numbers. Inflation is much higher than the government will admit. For instance, I see many items at the grocery store with a 100 percent increase. Sliced turkey was once seven dollars a pound, now fourteen. Milk has doubled, as have eggs and many more items. And seniors will now get a three percent increase in benefits? Pathetic!
But, even with groceries much higher with no end in sight, the cost of eating out is outrageous. My son tells me that there is an extra line in his dining bill for food and server inflation. Another fifteen percent was added to the bill. That’s before the tip! Ridicules!
So, to answer, we may drive through a place now and then, but our dining days are over unless we have a special occasion. We are back to how I remember dining out as a luxury as a kid. It was rare.
That pathetic 3% raise is exactly why the economic politburo deliberately underreported true inflation.
Where do you live that you see 14/lb for turkey in the supermarket deli?
In South Florida I can get it for 9/lb and 7/lb when it’s on sale.
That’s what I pay for Boars Head Turkey in Long Island, NY. Similar to SW CT
Long Island my birthplace Born in Mineola grew up in Merrick Lived 25years in Sag Harbor Got outta Dodge in 2014 Just wished I’d woken up earlier
I live in a very popular tourist hotspot on the Irish west-coast and I can tell you with 100% accuracy, there were far fewer tourists this year AND they spent WAY less.
Especially restaurants/pubs are suffering.
I think this fairytale of a booming economy has already ended and the cracks are beginning to show.
So once again, the financial economy isn’t the real economy.
Irish GDP doesn’t mean a damn thing, considering the tax-evading corporations that weigh heavily in this GDP number.
All I hear is that young people are leaving, nobody is buying anything and even supermarkets are seeing less items purchased because of the endless pricehikes due to high inflation.
But what I also notice is just a general feeling of preferring keeping to yourself, to keep your own company.
Has anyone else noticed this? Well I have.
Something broke with the events of the last few years and there’s a lot of anger.
Which of course takes away the desire to mingle and go out for dinner.
Interesting comments about keeping to yourself and lots of anger. I see this a lot among people I know, also. Compared to pre-Covid it seems like a lot of people feel like they’ve lost control of their lives. The desire to keep to yourself is maybe a way to try to isolate your self from an increasingly alien world in which we’re just pinballs being bounced around by people who have no interest in our freedom or well being.
Maybe that’s because we have lost control of our lives but we have only ourselves to blame Eisenhower warned us about them along time ago
Money printors have inflated property prices to the stratosphere, and not just in the epicenter such as US, Canada and Australia, but like a stone thrown into the water, the ripples spread out. Most people don’t own stocks, but they certainly know property, and that has become a mission impossible.
They can’t say failed system, but can certainly feel it.
Never did much eating out. Crappy service, Cisco food, feel terrible afterwards. Can’t see the point of it.
Never did pay much attention to Krugman. Crappy ideas, lazy thinking, perpetual free pass from the commie press. Nonentity.
Feel terrible afterwards is from stomach flu you contract at places of common dining.
Not a surprise at all, it’s a feature.
It’s SYSCO not Cisco and I agree, I don’t eat at chain restaurants because most now have industrialized processed food trucked in which is bland flavorless food.
Sysco food. Cisco makes network equipment.