If you’re a beef lover you may have experienced sticker shock at the grocery store over the past four years. While the pandemic and the extreme government responses to it are in the past, extraordinary food prices are not.
Eggs that may have cost $2 per dozen four years ago are still selling for $6 or $7. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cost of a dozen eggs is now more than $3, but anyone who has been into a grocery story can attest that that price looks pretty cheap.
But the price of beef has put more Americans off the staple meat, and the Dallas Federal Reserve says it has noticed that more people are replacing steak with less expensive sausage. And one of the meat manufacturers the group surveyed reported “modest growth” in sausage sales, which tracks with American households that are turning to sausage instead of chicken or beef in order to stretch their grocery dollars.
That manufacturer, which is not named, offered a spokesperson who said sausage sales tend to go up when the economy weakens because it offers the same high-quality protein at a lower price.
While the Biden administration seems to never stop insisting on telling the public that inflation is decreasing, real Americans are able to see that their grocery bills are far higher than they were just a few years ago. A February report from the Wall Street Journal demonstrated that in 2022 Americans spent more than 11 percent of their budget on food, which is the highest percentage measured since 1991.
With wallets lighter and leaner, so is spending on discretionary items such as restaurant meals. Fast food joints like McDonalds see this problem showing up in their earnings reports as fewer people are willing to spend $12 on a meal that might have cost $7 a few years ago. This is new for consumers and fast food franchises, as until the past few years, fast food was perceived as cheap because it was actually cheap.
Not so anymore. McDonalds is trying to bring back customers by launching a new $5 meal combination. Will it work? It is hard to say. Customers know that they could get a Quarter Pounder With Cheese meal for just more than $5 a decade ago, while the same thing today costs almost $12.
