I went grocery shopping yesterday morning and found myself taken a bit aback at the grand total of about $120.00 for people food only. This is a weekly shop for food for us. My husband was with me and asked what I honestly thought these foods would have cost 4 or 5 years ago. I told him this amount of groceries probably would have cost about $85. Some foods have seen a small amount of price increase, while others like eggs (which have more than doubled) have really skyrocketed. Butter is crazy high right now. Milk has increased 50% in price. I have primarily bought the same basic foods for many years, so I remember what I used to pay for items pre-2020. Even with more expensive grocery store prices, cooking and eating at home is still a better deal in most cases compared to restaurant eating.
I realize that my region of the US has a high cost of living. So understand that my restaurant meal prices may be more than yours. But I also believe that lower restaurant prices also correlate to lower grocery store prices. So, a similar comparison for your area could likely be made.
Here's a typical casual restaurant meal my family would enjoy.
A Five Guys burger costs $11.29 each, multiplied by 4, $45.16 for the burgers. If we split a regular order of fries 4 ways that adds $6.49. Our sales tax rate is 10.5%. So for $57.07 my household of 4 adults can go grab a burger out.
Or, we can use our premium ground beef bought on contract from a rancher, I can do burgers for 4 at home, including buns and all the fixings for ~ $20.00. If I add frozen fries, our home-made burger night would cost about $23.00. Judging by the fact that high schoolers are hired to flip burgers, I think it's fair to say that making burgers at home is very do-able for most adults.
So burgers can be a bit expensive for better quality ones. How about pizza? Mod Pizza is a popular choice for casual dining in my area. If we all got the Mad Dog (pepperoni and sausage), we'd need 1 "mini" ($9.39) and 2 "MODs" ($11.39 each) to feed us all. If we drank water, we could have a dinner out for $35.55 including tax.
Or, I can make pepperoni and sausage pizza from scratch at home to feed us for $8 or $9 at most. Scratch pizza is a bit more complicated than making burgers, as you have to make a dough. If I don't want to mess with a homemade dough, I can buy a Pillsbury Refrigerated Classic Pizza Crust at Walmart for $3.64. That would bump my homemade sausage and pepperoni pizza meal up to around $10. That is still less than 1/3 of a Mod pizza dinner out.
Even with significant grocery inflation, it's still a better deal for the 4 of us to cook and eat at home, and that takes into account that some of my ingredients are what I'd consider premium and not budget.
We may not be able to reduce inflation ourselves, but we can find ways to mitigate some of the effects of these higher prices.
