Food prices have been on the rise — and that’s especially true for your July 4th grilling staples.
The cost of buying your meat, buns and cheese has reached an all time high, skyrocketing 28% over the past 10 years, according to a Fortune-compiled BBQ index using Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The BBQ index features everything you need for a delicious all-American meal: ground beef, white bread, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, American cheese and, to round out the fun, potato chips and ice cream.
Prices are all based on per-pound standards. If you take out the ice cream and chips and divide up the pound of burger meat into homemade quarter-pounders, it will cost you an average of $3.02 to make each of your burgers this year, compared to $2.38 per burger 10 years ago — a 27% increase.
What’s pushing up the cost? While all the barbecue input prices have risen over the last 10 years, ground beef has seen the steepest gain.
The price of a pound of burger meat has jumped over 70% on average since 2004 and 16.5% in the past year alone from May 2013 to May 2014, partially due to a shrinking U.S. cattle herd.
(Note: All years are an average of data collected by the BLS across 12 months. 2014 numbers include data through May.)