UK food inflation: why your barbecue meat is becoming more expensive

The Guardian

3 days ago

The weather is not the only thing putting a dampener on impromptu barbecues as consumers balk at the soaring cost of burgers, sausages and chicken to put on the grill.
At nearly £4, a four-pack of supermarket own-label beef quarter-pounders costs 53%, or £1.37, more than this time last year, according to the price analysts Assosia. With steak and kebabs also off the menu because they are too pricey, Britons are switching to poultry.
However, this extra demand is pushing up the price of chicken. A 600g pack of chicken thighs, for example, now costs £5.54. This is an increase of 64p, or 13%, on last year, based on the pre-promotion prices across Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons.
Inflation has been mounting in the meat and poultry aisles since the turn of the year, which Andrew Keeble, the managing director and founder of Heck Sausages, described as a 'perfect storm'.
Chicken prices had risen in the past two years from £2.85 a kilo to £5.50, driven by a combination of avian flu and the industry drive to reduce the number of chickens in each shed on welfare grounds, he told the BBC.
'We fully support it but you get fewer chickens in a shed [and] there aren't enough sheds, to put it bluntly, and that is driving availability prices through the roof at the moment,' Keeble said.
The pain doesn't end at the patty cost for burger fans either, as the price of cheese slices and brioche buns has gone up, too, according to Assosia.
Even the soft drink to wash it all down is more expensive because of soaring packaging costs, with polymer plastic prices more than doubling since November 2024. Drinks brands are also contending with the rising cost of sugar and fruit concentrates.
According to the latest shop price monitor from the British Retail Consortium, food prices rose by 4% in July from a year earlier, up from 3.7% in June and above the three-month average of 3.5%.
The BRC's chief executive, Helen Dickinson, said households would have noticed their higher grocery bills after food price inflation rose for the sixth consecutive month.
'Staples such as meat and tea were hit the hardest as wholesale prices for both categories have been hit by tighter global supplies,' she said. 'This has helped push up overall shop prices.'
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The same pressures affecting the high street are pushing up the cost of food and drink in bars and restaurants, with another industry barometer, the CGA Prestige foodservice price index, recording a 2% month-on-month increase in June.
This upswing in inflation was 'yet another challenge to hospitality in the crucial summer months', said Reuben Pullan, a senior insight consultant at CGA by NIQ.
'Alongside labour cost rises of their own, and hesitant consumer spending, it puts some businesses under severe pressure and will force them to push menu prices up further,' he said.