Cheeseburger Price Trends

What the Long Run Shows

Over the 87-month window of BLS data on this site, the homemade cheeseburger has moved from $2.02 in January 2017 to $3.32 in March 2026, a cumulative change of +64.4%. That works out to a compound annual rate of roughly 9.3% over the most recent five years, which is the same range the BLS Consumer Price Index for food at home has reported across this period.

The chart is not smooth. Ground beef alone carries about half the burger's weight, and ground beef prices respond to U.S. cattle inventory, feed costs, and processor capacity. When the cattle herd contracted to multi-decade lows around 2024, the index pushed to a fresh all-time high. Conversely, every time produce prices retreat in late summer, when California iceberg and Mexican-import tomatoes both peak earlier in the year, the index typically eases for a month or two before resuming its longer-run climb.

How This Compares to Restaurant Burger Inflation

A useful contrast comes from the Federal Reserve, which tracks restaurant pricing through BLS food-away-from-home CPI. That measure has been rising faster than food-at-home for years. The gap is what drives the headlines about fast food costing more than ever, but the homemade cheeseburger index measures groceries, not menu prices, so it captures only the raw input side of the trend. When you see a Big Mac price rise faster than the line on this page, the difference is mostly labor, occupancy, and franchisee margin, not ingredient cost.

For agricultural context, the USDA Economic Research Service publishes complementary food cost reports that explain why specific commodities swing in a given quarter. Those reports pair well with the trends below if you want to understand why a particular spike happened, not just that it did. Together with the BLS retail series, they give a complete picture of the supply-side forces moving the homemade burger basket month to month.

Three Recurring Patterns in the Time Series

Three patterns recur across years of BLS data on this page. First, the index almost always rises faster in the back half of the year than in the first half, because cattle prices typically firm into late summer and produce supply tightens through the fall. Second, the largest single-month moves are almost always beef-driven. When ground beef prints a sharp month-over-month change, the composite index follows. Third, after every major upcycle in the index there is a multi-month plateau rather than a sharp reversal, because U.S. cattle inventory rebuilds slowly and dairy contracts reset annually rather than in real time. These structural features are why we publish the unsmoothed series instead of a seasonally adjusted alternative. The actual retail price you would pay at the register is what households experience, not a statistical adjustment.

A Decade of Burger Price History in Context

Looking across the full BLS data window, three distinct phases stand out. The mid-2010s through 2019 was a remarkably stable period for U.S. food inflation: ground beef pulled back from its mid-decade highs, dairy supply was abundant, and produce production was close to historical norms. The composite cheeseburger index drifted modestly higher across this stretch but rarely spiked. The 2020 through 2022 period was dominated by pandemic-era supply chain disruption, labor shortages in meatpacking and produce, and the broad inflationary surge that pushed every food category higher. The cheeseburger index posted multiple double-digit annual increases in this period, with ground beef leading the way and produce contributing intermittent spikes tied to weather events.

The 2023 through 2026 period has been characterized by elevated and persistent prices rather than runaway inflation. Ground beef has continued to set new highs as the U.S. cattle herd remains at multi-decade lows. Cheese pricing has moved in step changes tied to dairy contract resets. Bread has been stable. And produce has been seasonally volatile but trend-flat. The composite index has held near record highs for an extended period without dramatic month-over-month moves, which is what an elevated-but-stable inflation regime looks like in this kind of basket.

How to Use This Trend Page

For households tracking grocery inflation, the year-over-year column in the table is the most informative single number. It strips out month-to-month seasonal noise and gives a clean read on whether the burger basket is more or less expensive than it was at the same point a year earlier. For researchers and journalists, the cumulative change between two specific months, which can be calculated directly from the table, is more useful than any specific monthly figure. For commodity-focused readers, the per-pound ingredient columns on the right side of the table are the most direct view of which input is doing the work behind any given monthly move.