Cost of a home-grilled cheeseburger up 11 cents from 2019

For Fourth of July cookouts this year, cheeseburgers could be a bit pricier than they were in 2019. The latest available prices from May 2021 show the ingredients for a home-prepared quarter-pound cheeseburger totaled $1.89 per burger, with ground beef making up the largest cost at $1.03 and cheddar cheese accounting for $0.34. This same cheeseburger would have cost $1.78 to prepare in May 2019, an increase of 6.3 percent. Retail prices for one-pound quantities of all ingredients, except tomatoes, were higher in May 2021 compared with May 2019. USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) is using 2019 for comparison because 2020 was an unusual year for food prices. Higher ground beef prices accounted for more than half the 11-cent increase between 2019 and 2021, while cheddar cheese costs were 1 cent more per burger in May 2021. Bread and iceberg lettuce prices rose the fastest—17.2 and 11.4 percent, respectively—but these ingredients represented a relatively small portion of the total cost of a burger. Bread and lettuce added 4 cents to a burger’s total cost in 2021. Tomato prices remained roughly the same over this period. This chart uses data from the ERS Food Price Outlook data product.