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Ingredient prices

Cheddar cheese price per pound

Natural cheddar, US city average. Used in enough places on a typical American menu that a move here shows up across the whole food cost line rather than in one dish.

Also known as cheese, natural cheddar, or block cheddar.

September 2026 · US city average

$5.74

per lb

1 month
−3.7%
3 months
−4.8%
12 months
−5.0%

2024-01 to 2026-07

6.125.51Jan '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 −5.0% 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 412/wk
Cheeseburger (1 slice)1 oz$0.36−$0.02−$401.70
Mac and cheese3 oz$1.08−$0.06−$380.25
Grilled cheese2.5 oz$0.90−$0.05−$219.38
Nachos4 oz$1.44−$0.08−$429.00

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 supply and butterfat. Cheese competes directly with butter for milk fat.
  • Block market. Commodity cheese trades actively and moves faster than most dairy retail prices suggest.
  • Export demand. Meaningful and variable; it can tighten domestic supply with no domestic cause.

Buying notes

  • Pre-shredded costs more per pound, contains anti-caking starch that changes how it melts, and saves real labour. Whether it's worth it is a prime cost question, not a food cost one.
  • Block cheese shredded in house has effectively no yield loss, which pre-shredded's price premium has to beat before it's genuinely more expensive.
  • Cheese is a portioning problem more than a purchasing one. A hand-laid "slice" that drifts from 1 oz to 1.4 oz on a dish selling 400 a week is a real number — weigh twenty of them, see portion control.

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

Related terms