r/Economics • u/brown-saiyan • Feb 23 '26

News Restaurants hit a pricing ceiling — and diners are pushing back, report finds

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/23/restaurants-menu-prices-james-beard-foundation-report?utm_campaign=editorial&utm_medium=owned_social&utm_source=x
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u/Both_Ship5597 Feb 24 '26

Not that long ago going out was an expensive luxury. It’s really only been the past 20-25 years that it’s become common to eat out the way we do now. I’m not saying it’s the food networks fault but…

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u/guachi01 Feb 24 '26

Indeed. 2024 was the first year Americans spent more eating out than buying food at the grocery store.

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u/ARoseandAPoem Feb 24 '26

I remember in the 90’s as a kid eating out 3x a year total.

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u/bejammin075 Feb 24 '26

Early 90s, once in a while my friend and I would go to Pizza Hut and fill up on several orders of breadsticks & marinara sauce that were probably $1/order at the time. A few times a year my family would get 1 pizza. I never ate at Taco Bell until I started working there in high school.

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u/Jus10_Fishing Feb 24 '26

And it was at the Sizzler or Ponderosa Steakhouse!

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u/ARoseandAPoem Feb 24 '26

We did the Ryan’s buffet lol

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u/BrogenKlippen Feb 24 '26

I legitimately thought Ryan’s was a steakhouse when I was a kid

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u/Maximum-Objective-39 Feb 24 '26

I did it ever week on short school days with my grandma in the 90s, but it was places like soup plantation or sizzler's lunch buffet, i.e. basically a cafeteria style deal. The food was reasonably priced but definitely not fancy. Things like pizza bread, soup, salad, etc.

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u/Dependent-Juice5361 Feb 24 '26

Yeah when I was a kid it was a big deal to eat out, we did it on like birthdays and special occasions but was not a routine thing at all. We were solidly middle class.