About Burgernomics
What does a cheeseburger actually cost?
What we do
Burgernomics rebuilds the cost of a cheeseburger from raw BLS ingredient prices every month, so readers can see inflation as a meal, not a number.
We focus on U.S. food-price inflation at the ingredient level. Every page on burgernomics.org is built from the BLS Consumer Price Index Average Price series, cited and linkable so readers can trace any number back to its source.
Who runs this
Burgernomics is built and maintained by the Burgernomics Team. We're a small group working on making public U.S. food-price inflation at the ingredient level data easier for non-specialists to read. If you have a correction, a data tip, or a question about how a number was derived, the contact email below reaches us directly.
Who this is for
Burgernomics is built for budget-conscious shoppers, economics teachers, and reporters covering the cost of living.
Why this exists
Public data on U.S. food-price inflation at the ingredient level is technically free, but practically locked behind file formats, acronyms, and paywalled dashboards. Burgernomicsexists to close that gap: take the raw federal and public-sector data, and turn it into pages a normal person can read in thirty seconds.
How we work
- Primary source only. We pull from the BLS Consumer Price Index Average Price series and cite the exact dataset and version on every page.
- No invented numbers. If a figure is not in the underlying public data, it does not appear on burgernomics.org. We never generate synthetic statistics to fill gaps.
- Methodology, in plain English. We pull the BLS Consumer Price Index Average Price series for the ingredients in a quarter-pound cheeseburger (ground beef, cheddar, bread, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, condiments) and sum them into a single monthly dollar figure. Charts and year-over-year changes come straight from the BLS series — no modeling.
- Refreshed on a schedule. Refreshed monthly on BLS CPI release day, typically the second Tuesday of the following month.
- Corrections welcome. Readers flag issues all the time. When the source fixes a record, Burgernomics follows.
Known limitations
Average-price series cover a basket of U.S. cities and do not reflect local shelf prices. Ingredient weights and package sizes are held constant, so the index tracks price change, not shrinkflation or recipe changes at any specific restaurant.
Why a fast-food price index deserves a public-facing home
Fast-food prices are a useful proxy for real-world cost-of-living movement because the inputs — ground beef, wheat, cheese, lettuce, packaging, minimum-wage labor, commercial rent — touch most of the things that drive everyday inflation. The original Economist Big Mac Index used a single sandwich at a single chain to compare purchasing power across countries. Burgernomics applies the same idea to U.S. metros: a basket of fast-food cheeseburger prices tracked over time, by chain and by city, as a layperson-readable inflation indicator.
The presentation problem is that fast-food price data is not centrally published. Chains publish their own prices on their own apps and websites, BLS tracks restaurant food inflation as a CPI subindex without per-chain or per-metro detail, and academic studies of menu pricing typically sample a single point in time. Burgernomics combines per-chain published prices with the BLS CPI series for restaurant food away from home, so readers see both a real menu price and the official inflation series that should track it.
How the pipeline pulls price data
The pipeline pulls from two sources on a monthly cadence. First, the BLS Consumer Price Index public API (no key required for low-volume access) supplies the seasonally-adjusted Food Away From Home series and the broader U.S. City Average Limited Service Meals subseries. Second, the published menu prices from major chain franchisee apps are sampled in a small set of representative metros each month. The sampled prices are the headline figure on each city page; the BLS series is the trend line on the index page.
A practical detail: chain prices vary substantially by location even within a single brand, because most U.S. fast-food restaurants are franchisee-operated and franchisees set their own prices within corporate guidance. The site samples a small number of representative locations per metro, not every store, and notes the sample size on each city page so readers understand the figure is an estimate rather than a census.
Where price-index data has caveats
Three caveats. First, sampled menu prices are point-in-time and can change between sampling cycles. Promotional pricing (a chain running a national discount or a local franchisee running a promo) can pull a sampled price below the steady-state menu price. The site flags promotional periods where they are known.
Second, the BLS CPI restaurant food series is national. It does not break out per-metro inflation for restaurant food at a sufficient frequency to compare against the monthly sampled prices. The trend comparison on the index page works at the national level; metro-by-metro comparison relies on the sampled prices alone.
Third, the cheeseburger basket is a proxy for general fast-food inflation, not a comprehensive cost-of-living index. Housing, healthcare, and energy each move with different drivers and are not represented in this dataset. Readers comparing cost-of-living across metros should treat the cheeseburger index as one indicator among several rather than as a substitute for a full cost-of-living index.
Independence
Burgernomics is an independent publication. We are not funded, owned, or directed by any of the agencies, companies, or organizations that appear in our data. Hosting is paid for by advertising — see our Privacy Policy for details — and we do not take paid placements, sponsored rankings, or "remove-my-entry" fees.
History
Burgernomics launched in 2025 as part of a small portfolio of independent public-data sites. It has been maintained and updated continuously since.
Contact
Tips, corrections, data-partnership questions, and press inquiries: hello@burgernomics.org. More options on our contact page.