Inflation has been top of mind for many Americans in recent years thanks to the pressure it has put on their wallets, especially the rising cost of food.
On Feb. 27, Wendy’s announced a plan to introduce dynamic pricing to its menus. The chain immediately faced backlash, and a day later, the company clarified that it won’t raise prices.
Additionally, rising fast food prices have inspired multiple viral social media posts. One post with 59,000 likes compared the price of Taco Bell’s Beefy 5-Layer Burrito from 2009 to 2024 and contrasted that with the stagnation of the federal minimum wage. Another post uses the “Taco Bell Index” to calculate the inflation rate of Taco Bell’s menu since 1999, which the creator of the post suggested is a more accurate measure of inflation than the official rate released by the federal government.
THE QUESTION
Have fast food prices risen faster than inflation in the last 15 years?
THE SOURCES
Earning calls for McDonald’s and Wendy’s
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which saves older or deleted versions of webpages
THE ANSWER
Yes, fast food prices have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation in the last 15 years.
WHAT WE FOUND
Data from the last 15 years suggests that fast food prices have generally been rising faster than the nationwide inflation rate.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) uses something called the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to track inflation or the increased cost of common consumer goods and services over time.
The CPI can also be broken down into individual categories, one of which is “limited service meals and snacks.” Limited-service eating places are defined by the federal government as places where customers order and pay for their food before eating. Included in this category are fast food restaurants, pizza delivery chains, takeout places, cafeterias, snack bars and non-alcoholic beverage bars.
BLS data for monthly CPI between Jan. 2009 and Feb. 2024 shows the CPI rose by 46.97%, which averages to an overall inflation rate of just over 3% per year. Over that same period of time, the CPI subcategory for limited service meals rose by 69.51%, which would mean the costs of such meals have risen by more than 4.6% per year.
VERIFY also compared the current prices on Taco Bell’s menu to an archived version of the company’s menu from July 2018, the furthest back VERIFY could find a working version of the menu on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
In the five and a half years between July 2018 and March 2024, Taco Bell’s soft taco has gone from $1.19 to $1.79, its Doritos Locos Taco from $1.79 to $2.59, its beefy 5-layer burrito from $1.99 to $3.69, its burrito supreme from $3.39 to $4.99 and its chicken quesadilla from $3.69 to $5.19.
On average, the prices for those five items rose by 34%. The overall CPI rose by 23% over that same time period.
While there isn’t data for average fast food menu prices as a whole, we can look at the rise in prices at individual chains over the past year and compare that to last year’s rate of inflation.
In a Q4 2023 earnings call, McDonald’s CEO Christopher Kempczinski said the fast food chain saw “mid-to-high, single-digit price increases last year.”
Similarly, Gunther Plosch, chief financial officer of Wendy’s, said in the company’s Q3 2023 earnings call that the company’s prices increased almost 10% year over year.
Both of these increases are higher than the overall CPI last year, which rose by about 3.4%, from December 2022 to December 2023, according to the BLS. The CPI subcategory for limited services meals rose 5.9% last year.
This story is also available in Spanish / Lee este artículo también en español: Sí, los precios de la comida rápida han aumentado más rápido que la inflación durante los últimos 15 años
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