How much we spent on food in 2024, why groceries are expensive, and how our food expenditure compares to national figures
Shitty Housewife Got Nerdier
It feels like I don’t really need to introduce the food spending spreadsheet. You probably know about it, if you’re reading this. But in case you aren’t, here it is: I have been tracking every cent we spend on food (groceries and eating out) since 2019, and at the end of the year, we send out an analysis of our food spending as our holiday card (I say card, but it’s actually a five-page newsletter). Previous editions can be found here: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.
The 2024 newsletter has started to arrive in people’s real life letterboxes, so I think I can write about it here now. There’s a bit of further analysis I wanted to do, and what’s the point of having a Substack if I can’t write whatever I want, including all the things about food spending that won’t fit into five pages?
In 2024, we spent $13,119.46 on food groceries, and $8,334.36 on eating out. We spent $3,565.25 at the farmers’ market, which was more than any other food source (the next highest was Sprouts, at $2,084.33, which is where we bought most of our milk and eggs). We spent a hair under $5,200 on fruits and veg, less than half that on raw meat (around $2,100), and just under $1,900 on what I think of as ingredients (butter, eggs, flour, oil, and sugar). I estimated that in an ordinary, everyday life, routine week at home, we ate out 2.53 times. And that about 225 meals were cooked at home.
Not long after we wrote the newsletter, I came across a fascinating article about the cost of groceries: Why are groceries so expensive? The article explains there have been several factors contributing to the increase in the cost of groceries over the past few years: supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic, higher transport costs and fuel prices, a wheat shortage due to the Russia-Ukraine war, animal disease outbreaks, crop failures due to weather events, increases in labour costs, corporate greed on the part of grocery stores, and inflation.
The author of the article notes that since January 2019, food prices have risen nearly 30 per cent in the US, and that ‘[b]ased on national averages and considering no other factors, like crop failures or import tariffs, a cartful of groceries purchased for $100 in 2019 would cost about $123.40 today.’
In a similar vein, a recent NPR Planet Money podcast episode also discussed grocery prices, and they noted that grocery prices have increased 25% between 2019 and 2023, even though overall inflation was lower, at only 18%.
I was particularly interested in these numbers because January 2019 is precisely when I started tracking our food spending. In 2019, our total food grocery expenditure was $7,666.89 (using inflation adjusted figures; this is the total in 2024 dollars), making the 2024 figure of $13k a 71% increase on five years ago. In 2019, our eating out figure was $6,168.28 (inflation adjusted number), so 2024’s expenditure of $8,300 is approximately a 35% increase.
Not all of this can be attributed to the increase in food prices. In our personal ‘Why do we spend so much more now on food?’, there are a few factors. One, our kids have got older. In 2019, Charlie wasn’t born, and Tilly was two. Now, Charlie is four and Tilly is seven. They eat a lot more than they did five years ago.
Two, in 2021 we started voting with our forks, and buying food that was better for the planet, for animal welfare, and better for human health. We started buying organic milk, eggs and meat from pasture-raised animals, and produce from the farmers’ market. This resulted in much higher expenditure on individual food items, like milk, meat, eggs, and fresh fruit and veg. If you look at the percentage increase of food groceries from 2021 to 2024, you’ll find that it went from $11,807 (inflation adjusted figure) to $13k, an 11% increase.
Three, the discovery of better quality food and how much better it tasted meant we started cooking at home a lot more. 2023 paused the cooking briefly (well, for nine months, which actually didn’t feel brief at all) as we renovated the kitchen and couldn’t properly cook for most of the year.
In 2024, the kids ate the most that they ate in all the years of tracking, we continued buying excellent food ingredients, and we cooked more meals from scratch than any other year, because cooking in the new kitchen is easier and more enjoyable than in our old kitchen. I imagine that our 11% increase in food grocery expenditure from 2021 reflects these factors more than grocery inflation, though that has also definitely played a role (the milk we buy went from $6.69 in 2022 to $7.49 in 2024 for a half gallon container).
It seems like the general increase in the cost of food is far more evident in eating out. Our 2024 eating out figure (about $8,300) was a 35% increase on the number in 2019 of around $6,100. Again, this is partly because the kids are older (and there’s one more of them than in 2019). But we ate out a lot less in 2024 than in 2019.
For a meal out for the four of us at a fast casual restaurant (no table service), we spend around $50–70, and at a sit-down restaurant with table service that is mid-tier, we’d be looking at a bill of around $70–110. In 2019, for the three of us to go out for a meal at a fast casual restaurant, it usually cost less than $25. In 2022, when there were four of us (and we were all eating solids by that stage), a meal at a fast casual restaurant cost around $40.
This significant increase in the cost of eating out has meant we just don’t eat out that much anymore. Eating out doesn’t seem like it’s worth it now. Often the food is just okay, or not worth what we paid for it. I end up annoyed at paying such a large amount for food that is not much better (or worse) than what I can make at home. My goal for 2025 is to eat out even less than last year — I imagine this will mean our food grocery expenditure increases even more. I guess we’ll find out in about a year.