Ground Beef Hit a Record in August: How Much Should Your Burger Price Go Up?

Start by working out how much more each burger now costs you. If you want to keep at least the same dollars per burger after food cost, the price has to go up by at least that much. In the example below, beef going up 50 cents a pound adds about 19 cents to a 6-ounce burger. Moving a $13.50 burger to $13.75 does that, with a little to spare. Getting back to the old food cost percentage would take $14.25. That's three times the increase, and it's a separate decision about earning more per burger, not about covering the beef. Trimming the patty to 5.5 ounces gets you within 3 cents of even at the old price, but your guests get less beef.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' average U.S. retail price for 100% ground beef was $6.923 a pound in August 2026. That's the highest published monthly figure in the series, which goes back to January 1984, and 9.6% above August 2025. In mid-September, the owner of a small restaurant in Owasso, Oklahoma told News 9 that he pays week-to-week prices, not the long-term contract prices big chains get. He planned to raise his beef items about 10% and make chicken an option on every burger. If beef costs more on your next delivery, you face the same question: how much of a price increase does the beef actually justify?

What the price reports tell you, and what they don't

You'll see several beef numbers in the news. None of them is your cost.

• BLS retail price. $6.923 a pound in August 2026 is a grocery-store average for the whole country. It shows where grocery prices have been and what your guests see at the store. Retail prices usually trail wholesale moves, so it isn't a forecast of what your supplier will charge, and it isn't what you pay.
• USDA wholesale. USDA's daily boxed beef report for September 28, 2026 put negotiated sales of 81% lean ground beef, sold in 10-pound chubs, at a weighted average of $356.00 per 100 pounds. That's about $3.56 a pound, FOB the packing plant, for delivery within 21 days. It's a packer price before freight and your distributor's markup, so it isn't a quote for your back door.
• USDA forecast. On September 25, 2026, USDA's Economic Research Service reported retail beef and veal prices 5.9% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier and forecast a 9.4% increase for all of 2026, with a range of 7.4% to 11.6%. It expects beef production to stay below year-earlier levels through the end of 2026. Over the same 12 months, restaurant and other food-away-from-home prices rose 3.4%.
• The wholesale trend. The same ERS report shows wholesale beef prices falling 4.1% from June to July and another 3.0% from July to August, though they were still 3.1% above August 2025. Retail beef and veal prices overall slipped 0.6% from July to August, even though the BLS ground beef average rose. That doesn't mean the pressure is over, and ERS still forecasts higher beef prices for the year. It does mean one week's invoice is a shaky base for a permanent menu price.
• Menu prices so far. A Datassential analysis reported by Restaurant Dive in March 2026 found burger menu prices up about 14% since January 2023 while beef production costs rose 32%.

Your number is on your invoices. Start there.

Step 1: Find your own cost per pound

1. Pull the last four to eight invoices for the beef you actually grind or buy: the same lean point and the same pack.
2. For each one, divide the line total by the pounds delivered. If a fuel or delivery charge is billed by the pound, include it. A flat delivery fee belongs in overhead, not the patty.
3. Compare the newest price with the average. If your rep confirms the new price is what you'll keep paying, cost with it. If it looks like a one-week spike, cost with both and see how much the answer changes.
4. If you buy pre-formed patties, divide the case price by the number of patties. That gives you cost per patty directly.

Step 2: Cost the plate before and after

Here's a fictional burger counter. The classic burger is a 6-ounce raw patty of 81/19 ground beef with cheese, produce, sauce and fries. The delivered beef price went from $4.70 to $5.20 a pound, up 10.6%. Nothing else on the plate changed.

Amounts are rounded to the cent. The exact beef cost is 0.375 × $4.70 = $1.7625 before and 0.375 × $5.20 = $1.95 after, so each burger costs 18.75 cents more.

The shop sells 700 classic burgers a week. That's 262.5 pounds of beef, and at 50 cents more a pound the burger alone costs $131.25 more each week, about $6,825 over a year if the price holds.

"Left after food cost" isn't profit. Labor, rent, card fees and everything else still come out of it. It's just the part of the price the beef increase is eating into.

Step 3: Decide what you're pricing to

There are two sensible rules. They give very different answers.

Keep the same dollars per burger. Add the extra cost to the price: $13.50 + $0.19 = $13.69. This example rounds up to the next quarter, so call it $13.75. Each burger now leaves $9.95 after food cost, about 6 cents more than before, and food cost is 27.6%.

Keep the same food cost percentage. Divide the new plate cost by the old percentage: $3.80 ÷ 0.2676 = $14.20, so $14.25. Each burger leaves $10.45 and food cost is back to 26.7%.

Holding the percentage takes a 75-cent increase to cover 19 cents of beef. The other 56 cents is a raise in what you keep per burger. That might be exactly right if labor, rent or insurance also went up. But decide it with those numbers in front of you, not by accident while blaming the beef.

Here's the quick way to see it. Beef went up 10.6%, but beef is about half of this plate cost, so the plate went up 5.2%. The plate is a little over a quarter of the menu price, so covering the beef takes a price increase of only 1.4%. A 10% increase across the board, like the one in the News 9 story, would put this burger at $14.85 and leave $11.05 after food cost. That's a much bigger change than the beef alone explains.

Step 4: Work out how many burgers you can lose

A price increase only helps if enough people keep ordering. Before the beef went up, 700 burgers at $9.8875 each left $6,921.25 a week after food cost. Divide that by the new amount per burger to see the sales you need to stay even:

• Do nothing at $13.50: you keep all 700 sales but end up with $6,790, which is $131.25 short.
• $13.75: you need 696 burgers. You can lose 4 a week (0.6%) and still come out even.
• $14.25: you need 663. You can lose 37 a week (5.3%).
• $14.85: you need 627. You can lose 73 a week (10.4%).

A bigger increase gives you more cushion, but only if guests don't leave faster than the cushion. Nobody can tell you in advance how your guests will react. What you can do is write down the break-even count before you change the price, then check it against real sales.

This math only looks at food cost. Card fees are a percentage of the check, so they rise a little with the price, and anything else that changed belongs in a full break-even check.

A smaller patty or a chicken option

Trimming the patty. At $5.20 a pound, a 5.5-ounce patty costs $1.79, just 3 cents more than the 6-ounce patty did at the old price. At $13.50 it leaves $9.86 per burger. That nearly covers the increase without touching the price. The catch is that guests notice a thinner burger. If your menu, website or delivery listings say "6 oz" or "third-pound," change the wording so it matches what you serve. If you add toppings to make up for the smaller patty, cost those toppings too, or you've given the savings back.

Offering chicken. That's the other move in the News 9 report. It only helps if a chicken burger costs you less to plate and some guests choose it. Cost it the same way, line by line. For context, ERS reported retail poultry prices 0.5% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier, but your chicken price is also on your invoice.

Before you change the menu

1. Confirm the price with your rep. Ask whether it's a weekly market price or a contract price, and when it's next reviewed.
2. Re-cost everything that uses the beef. The double, the kids' burger, the chili and the tacos all moved too. Work out each one the same way, using how many of each you sell every week. Using AI to draft a list of the menu items a supplier price increase hits walks through building that list and checking it for anything missing.
3. Change every price on the same day. That means the POS, online ordering, delivery apps, printed menus and menu boards. Mismatched prices cause refunds and complaints.
4. Write down the break-even count. For the $13.75 example, it's 696 classic burgers a week.
5. Watch the next four weeks. Compare classic burger counts with the same weekdays before the change. Weather, holidays and promotions move the number too, so look for a steady drop, not one slow day.
6. Pick your next checkpoint now. Decide what beef price per pound would make you re-cost again, so you're not reacting to every invoice.

To cost a full recipe with yields, use the restaurant food cost calculator. To see whether your food cost for the whole month matches your recipes, food cost percent: purchases are not the same as consumption walks through the inventory math.

Limits

The burger shop and all of its costs, prices and sales are fictional. They show the arithmetic, not typical costs or a recommended price. The BLS and USDA figures are national averages or packer prices on the dates stated. Your delivered price depends on your market, your distributor and what you buy. The ERS figure for 2026 as a whole is a forecast, and prices can move either way. We haven't tested these price changes in a restaurant, and none of this predicts how many guests will keep ordering at a new price.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, average price data, ground beef, 100% beef, per pound, U.S. city average (series APU0000703112), August 2026 and earlier months: BLS data series
• USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, National Daily Boxed Beef Cutout and Boxed Beef Cuts, Negotiated Sales, Afternoon (LM_XB403), September 28, 2026: AMS report (PDF)
• USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook, Summary Findings, updated September 25, 2026: ERS summary findings
• News 9, "Rising beef prices put pressure on local restaurants," September 18, 2026: News 9 article
• Restaurant Dive, "Beef costs exceed burger prices, pressuring QSRs," March 13, 2026: Restaurant Dive article