Level setting for the conversation.
General inflation:
Food inflation:
Between the 1970s and early 2000s, food-at-home prices and food-away-from-home prices increased at similar rates. However, between 2009 and 2019, their growth rates diverged; while food-at-home prices deflated in 2016 and 2017, monthly food-away-from-home prices rose consistently. Differences between the costs of serving prepared food at restaurants and retailing food in supermarkets and grocery stores partly explain this difference.
In 2020, food-at-home prices increased 3.5 percent and food-away-from-home prices increased 3.4 percent. This convergence was largely driven by a rapid increase in food-at-home prices following the onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, particularly for meats and poultry, while food-away-from-home price inflation remained similar to its 2019 inflation rate. In 2021, all food prices increased 3.9 percent as prices began accelerating in the second-half of the year. No food categories tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Economic Research Service (ERS) decreased in price in 2021 compared with their prices in 2020.
In 2022, food prices increased by 9.9 percent, faster than any year since 1979. Food-at-home prices increased by 11.4 percent, while food-away-from-home prices increased by 7.7 percent. Food prices rose partly due to a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak that affected egg and poultry prices and the conflict in Ukraine, which compounded other economy-wide inflationary pressures such as high energy costs. All food price categories increased by more than 5 percent, and all food categories grew faster than their historical average rate.
In 2023, food prices increased by 5.8 percent. Food price growth slowed in 2023 as economy-wide inflationary pressures, supply chain issues, and wholesale food prices eased from 2022. Food-at-home prices increased by 5.0 percent, and food-away-from-home prices increased by 7.1 percent. While prices increased for all food categories except for pork, prices grew more slowly in 2023 than in 2022 for all categories.