The price of breakfast

Few prices are felt as directly as the ones at the breakfast table. Every month the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys the average retail price of dozens of grocery staples. Five of them tell the story of the last decade.

Eggs are the wild line. Avian flu has repeatedly wiped out laying flocks, and because replacement hens take months to start laying, each outbreak sends prices vertical. A dozen Grade A large eggs cost $1.93 in January 2022, $4.82 a year later, and a record $6.23 in March 2025. By July 2026 they were back to $2.19.

Coffee is the slow burn. Its retail price has more than doubled since 2019 and reached $9.72 a pound in April 2026, after drought damaged harvests in Brazil and Vietnam, the world's two largest growers.

Ground beef quietly ends up in the same place: up about 80% since 2019, to $6.88 a pound, as the U.S. cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest in more than 70 years.

Milk and bacon did less damage: milk is up about 48% since January 2019, bacon about 19%. Most of the drama came from supply shocks specific to each product — bird flu, drought, a shrinking herd — rather than from inflation in general.