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Ingredient prices

Ground beef price per pound

100% ground beef, US city average. Usually the single largest line in an independent full-service kitchen's protein spend, and the one a burger menu lives or dies on.

Also known as hamburger, minced beef, or beef mince.

September 2026 · US city average

$6.89

per lb

1 month
+0.9%
3 months
−0.2%
12 months
+10.1%

2024-01 to 2026-07

6.905.03Jan '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 +10.1% 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
House burger6 oz patty$2.58+$0.24+$5,069.45
Double smash burger2 × 4 oz$3.44+$0.32+$2,624.96
Bolognese4 oz$1.72+$0.16+$1,476.54
Chili5 oz$2.15+$0.20+$974.11

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

  • Cattle herd size. Rebuilding a herd takes years, so tight supply persists long after the drought or cost shock that caused it.
  • Feed and fuel. Both flow into finishing cost and then into carcass price.
  • Lean-point demand. 80/20 and 90/10 don't move together — leaner blends track differently and can diverge by a lot.
  • Imported lean trim. Domestic blends depend on imported lean beef; trade policy on it moves the price of a burger patty directly.

Buying notes

  • Blend ratio is a cost lever most menus never touch. Moving from 80/20 to 85/15 changes both price per pound and cook loss, and the two partly cancel — run both through the yield calculator before assuming the leaner blend costs more.
  • Grinding in house from chuck or trim can be cheaper per usable pound, but only if the trim genuinely comes from cuts you're already breaking down. Buying chuck specifically to grind rarely beats a ground price.
  • Case price on catch-weight beef tells you nothing week to week — track the per-pound figure or you'll mistake a bigger box for a price rise. See catch weight.

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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