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With inflation at a 40-year high, consumers across the country are feeling the pain. They are paying more for almost everything, including America’s most popular fast-food meal — burgers, fries, and a soda.
According to a recent survey released by MoneyGeek, burgers, fries, and soda meals at McDonald’s — which sells more hamburgers than any other chain — cost around $6.19 this year. That’s up 11.5% from last year.
The same meal costs even more in Five Guys, $19.95 for the same meal, up 13.5% from 2021. That means some diners are feeling more than just the average inflation squeezes, according to MoneyGeek’s analysis of menu prices for 145 major and local chains across the 50 largest cities from both 2021 and 2022.
But the pain of paying higher prices for the famous American meal is uneven across the country, with diners in California and New York paying around $15. That’s twice as much as in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma, where it costs around $7.
“The cost of even basic meals has gone up dramatically in the past year, and we can see that clearly with the average prices for a burger, fries, and a soda in the U.S. showing a 9% increase from 2021 to 2022,” said Melody Kasulis, director of content marketing for MoneyGeek.
“That price increase is obvious in big cities like San Francisco and NYC, which top our list of the most expensive burger, fries, and soda meals at $15.30, with other large metropolitan areas not far behind.”
What’s behind this big gap between the two coastal states and the rest of the country? Kasulis attributes the high price tag for quick meals to several factors, including a labor shortage in the hospitality industry and wage hikes, which compel fast-food restaurants to hike dinner bills.
“Pair that with all of the other rising costs, and all of this leads to even more reason for conscious consumers to engage in some belt-tightening personal finance practices to avoid outrageous prices for what should be one of the most accessible American meals,” she said.
But in most states, wage hikes have very little to do with labor shortages and surpluses in the hospitality industry and more with wage hikes and labor mandates by the local governments, with California and New York leading this movement. For instance, California and New York’s minimum wage is around $15 per hour, the highest in the country, while Texas and Oklahoma’s minimum hourly wages are anywhere from $7 to $7.50, among the lowest in the country.
In addition, California and New York have introduced a host of mandates like labor, the “Fair Workweek” laws, which require employers to prepare work schedules for their employees ahead of time. It affects fast-food restaurants particularly hard, a sector that employs many hourly-paid workers, and ends up in the bill Californians and New Yorkers pay for fast food.
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