CPI Food.
The CPI food index covers everything consumers eat and drink — groceries (food at home) and meals out (food away from home), plus alcoholic beverages. It's roughly 13% of headline CPI and one of the most politically visible categories.
Food inflation, year-over-year
FRED:FPCPITOTLZGUSA · U.S. CPI YoY (use widget to switch to category series)
MonthlyWhat CPI food measures
BLS divides food into two main groupings. Food at home (~8% of the basket) tracks 8,000 grocery items across six major aggregates: cereals and bakery, meats/poultry/fish/eggs, dairy, fruits and vegetables, nonalcoholic beverages, and other food at home. Food away from home (~5%) tracks restaurant and cafeteria meals — full-service, limited-service, food at workplace and schools, and food from vending machines.
Food at home is dominated by commodity prices upstream — grains, livestock, oils, fertilizer — plus packaging, transportation, and grocery-store margins. It moves faster than food away from home and can swing sharply when crop yields, energy costs, or supply chains disrupt. Food away from home is dominated by labor costs and is much stickier; restaurant menu prices typically lag commodity moves by several quarters.
Both series are inside headline CPI, but stripped out of core. Together with energy, food is the principal reason headline and core diverge.
Sub-component breakdown
| Sub-component | Approx. weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Food at home (groceries) | ~8% | Six aggregates: cereals/bakery, meats/poultry/fish/eggs, dairy, fruits/vegetables, beverages, other |
| Food away from home | ~5% | Full-service restaurants, limited-service, workplace/school meals, vending |
| Cereals and bakery products | ~1.1% | Bread, rice, pasta, breakfast cereal |
| Meats, poultry, fish, eggs | ~1.8% | Beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs |
| Dairy and related | ~0.8% | Milk, cheese, ice cream, butter |
| Fruits and vegetables | ~1.4% | Fresh and processed, including juices |
| Nonalcoholic beverages | ~1.0% | Coffee, tea, sodas, juices |
| Alcoholic beverages | ~1.0% | At home and away from home |
Weights are shares of CPI-U, rounded. Exact values vary annually. Source: BLS Relative Importance tables.
What moves food inflation
Commodity prices are the upstream driver of food at home. Corn and soybean futures set feed costs for livestock, which flow through to meat and dairy. Wheat prices flow through to bakery. Crude oil affects packaging, transportation, and fertilizer (natural gas is the principal feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer).
Weather and disease can move specific items dramatically. Avian influenza outbreaks have repeatedly spiked egg prices over 50% year-over-year. Citrus greening in Florida, droughts in California, and frosts in Brazil's coffee belt all show up in CPI within a few months.
Labor costs dominate food away from home, where about a third of restaurant costs are wages and benefits. Minimum wage hikes, tight labor markets, and tipped-wage policy changes all pass through to menu prices.
Trade and tariffs matter for items heavily sourced internationally — seafood, tropical fruits, coffee, cocoa, certain meats. Trade-policy changes have shown up clearly in subcomponents during recent tariff episodes.
How food inflation has behaved
Food inflation has had several memorable spikes. The 1973–74 episode coincided with a Soviet wheat purchase and global crop failures, pushing food at home above 20% year-over-year. The 2007–2008 period saw a biofuel-driven corn rally feed through to meat and dairy. The 2021–22 episode combined supply-chain disruptions, avian flu, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine (which choked off about a quarter of global wheat exports), pushing food at home above 13% year-over-year — its highest reading in four decades.
Between spikes, food inflation tends to mean-revert toward 2–3% over long horizons, broadly matching overall CPI. Food away from home tends to run slightly above food at home over decades because labor costs grow faster than commodity inputs in trend terms.
Frequently asked questions
Is food in headline or core CPI?
Food is in headline CPI but excluded from core. The 'core CPI' measure strips out both food and energy because of their high volatility.
Why do grocery prices feel higher than CPI suggests?
CPI uses fixed weights for the basket. If you spend disproportionately on items that are rising fastest (eggs in 2022, beef in 2023), your personal food inflation will exceed BLS's reported figure.
What's the difference between food at home and food away?
Food at home is groceries bought for preparation at home. Food away is meals purchased at restaurants, cafeterias, vending machines, or other establishments selling prepared food.
How quickly do commodity prices show up in CPI food?
Wholesale grain and livestock moves typically take 3–9 months to reach grocery shelves, depending on the item. Coffee and chocolate can take 6–12 months because of long supply chains.
Does CPI capture shrinkflation?
Yes. BLS prices items per unit (per ounce, per count), so if a cereal box shrinks from 18 oz to 16 oz at the same price, that registers as a price increase per ounce in CPI.
Why is food away from home stickier than food at home?
Restaurants reprice menus infrequently because of printing costs, customer perception, and labor contracts. Grocery chains reprice weekly or even daily.