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Ingredient prices

Butter price per pound

Grade AA butter, US city average. Rarely the headline cost on a plate and frequently the one missing from the recipe card entirely.

Also known as grade AA butter, salted butter, or unsalted butter.

September 2026 · US city average

$3.92

per lb

1 month
+2.8%
3 months
−7.0%
12 months
−18.2%

2024-01 to 2026-07

5.003.82Jan '24Jul '26

What the last 12 months did to a plate

Representative portions and volumes — substitute your own. The point isn't the exact figure, it's that a −18.2% move on one ingredient turns into a specific annual number on a specific dish, and that number is usually larger than it feels.

DishUsesCost todayChange per platePer year at 142/wk
Beurre blanc (1.5 oz portion)1 oz$0.25−$0.05−$403.81
Bread service0.75 oz$0.18−$0.04−$1,322.34
Pan-finished steak0.5 oz$0.12−$0.03−$167.78
Croissant (per unit)1.4 oz$0.34−$0.08−$1,194.37

Volumes differ per row — each is a plausible weekly count for that dish. Computed from the BLS series above; your supplier price will differ by region, volume and grade.

What moves this price

  • Milk fat supply. Butterfat availability drives it more than fluid milk volume does; a strong cheese market competes for the same fat.
  • Export demand. International butterfat demand pulls on domestic supply and can move price with no domestic cause at all.
  • Q4 baking demand. A real and predictable annual peak — plan menus and contracts around it.

Buying notes

  • Butter is the classic Q factor item — used everywhere, costed almost nowhere. Most kitchens fold it into a per-cover allowance, and most of those allowances were set years ago.
  • The bread service is where butter cost hides in volume. At 620 covers a week, three quarters of an ounce each is roughly 29 lb a week nobody has on a recipe card.
  • Butterfat percentage varies between standard (80%) and European-style (82–86%). The higher-fat product costs more per pound and behaves differently in pastry — treat them as different ingredients, not a substitution.

This is the national average. Yours is the one that matters.

Marji reads your actual supplier invoices, so you see what you paid — and which of your dishes crossed their margin target because of it. The national number is only useful for telling a market move apart from a vendor move.

Track my real costs free →See it in the index

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