Groceries
The cost of feeding a family has changed dramatically over the decades. From a gallon of milk to a dozen eggs, we track staple grocery items so you can see exactly how food prices have shifted — and how they compare after adjusting for inflation.
Grocery Prices
Average cost of a standard grocery basket in the United States from 1950 to 2025, plus price histories for individual staples like milk, bread, eggs, and ground beef. Grocery prices hit households where it hurts — every single week. While overall food costs have roughly tracked general inflation over the long run, individual items tell wilder stories. Eggs can spike 70% in a single year due to avian flu. Bread stayed almost flat for a decade, then lurched upward. This dataset breaks down the big picture and the line items.
Coffee Prices
The average retail price of a pound of ground roast coffee in the United States, tracked from 1950 to 2025. Few grocery staples have had a wilder ride. Coffee prices have been whipsawed for decades by Brazilian frost events, civil wars in producing countries, and speculative commodity trading. A pound that cost under a dollar in the 1950s briefly tripled during the 1977 frost panic, settled back down, then began a relentless climb after 2010 that shows no signs of stopping.
Chicken Prices
The average retail price per pound of a whole chicken (fryer) in the United States, tracked from 1950 to 2025. Chicken is the great American protein bargain. Thanks to massive gains in farming efficiency — better breeds, automated processing, and vertically integrated supply chains — a pound of whole chicken actually got cheaper in real terms for most of the late twentieth century. Even now, at roughly $2.00 a pound, it remains one of the most affordable sources of animal protein you can buy at the grocery store.
Sugar Prices
The average retail price of white granulated sugar in the United States, tracked annually from 1950 through 2025. Sugar has one of the strangest price histories of any grocery staple. It spent most of the 20th century as dirt cheap thanks to massive government subsidies and import quotas, then spiked violently during the mid-1970s commodity panic before settling into a long, slow grind higher. Today it costs nearly nine times what it did in 1950, though adjusted for inflation it's actually cheaper than it was during the Carter administration.
Rice Prices
The average retail price of long-grain white rice in the United States, tracked annually from 1970 through 2025. Rice is the world's most important food crop, feeding more than half the planet every day, but Americans have long taken its cheapness for granted. That complacency got a rude awakening in 2008, when a global rice crisis sent prices soaring and Costco and Sam's Club briefly rationed bags at the checkout. The price has never fully retreated since, and recent supply disruptions have pushed it past a dollar per pound for the first time.
Bacon Prices
The average retail price of sliced bacon in the United States, tracked annually from 1950 through 2025. Bacon has gone from a blue-collar breakfast staple to something of a cultural phenomenon over the past two decades, and the price tag reflects that transformation. The "bacon craze" of the 2010s — bacon donuts, bacon ice cream, bacon everything — collided with tighter pork supplies and higher feed costs to push prices from under $2.00 per pound to well over $6.00, turning a once-cheap protein into a genuine budget consideration.
Butter Prices
The average retail price of salted Grade AA butter in the United States, tracked annually from 1950 through 2025. Butter has had one of the more interesting comeback stories in American food. Vilified for decades by nutritionists pushing margarine, it staged a full cultural rehabilitation starting around 2010 as dietary science shifted and cooking shows made real butter fashionable again. That surging demand, combined with tight dairy supplies and the 2022 "butterflation" panic, has pushed prices to nearly $5.00 per pound.
Cereal Prices
The average retail price of an 18-ounce box of corn flakes or equivalent breakfast cereal in the United States, tracked annually from 1980 through 2025. Cereal is one of the most aggressively marketed and quietly shrinkflated products in the entire grocery store. That box that used to weigh 20 ounces now weighs 18 — or sometimes 15 — while the sticker price keeps climbing. The cereal aisle tells a fascinating story about brand power, commodity costs, and just how much Americans will pay for convenience at breakfast.
Beer Prices
The average retail price of a domestic 12-ounce six-pack in the United States, tracked annually from 1960 through 2025. Beer might be the most steadily inflating product in the grocery store — it never crashes, never spikes, just keeps grinding higher year after year with almost mechanical consistency. That relentless climb reflects a combination of rising aluminum and grain costs, excise taxes that quietly increase, and a shift in consumer preferences toward pricier craft and imported brands that pulls the average up even when cheap beer stays cheap.