vs Last Month
−0.15 pts
Cooling continues.
Grocery Price Inflation
CPI Food at Home · YoY
2.20%
-0.15 pts vs. last month
Past 12 monthsRange 2.10 – 3.50
2022 Peak13.5%
vs Last Year-1.10
Pre-COVID Avg1.5%
Grocery inflation has cooled to 2.20% — far below the 13.5% 2022 peak. But the cumulative price level is still ~27% above 2020 — which is why the grocery bill still hurts.
Historical trend
Monthly YoY change.
Source: FRED · CUSR0000SAF11
The long view: since 1980
2022 was the worst grocery inflation episode since 1979.
Peak 13.5% · Aug 2022Trough −1.1% · 2009Today 2.2%
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
−1.10 pts
From 3.30%.
5-Yr Avg
5.30%
Skewed by 2022 spike.
Cumulative since 2020
+27%
Total price level still elevated.
Use this rate
Tools to manage grocery costs.
About Grocery Price Inflation (CPI Food at Home)
This tracker shows the year-over-year change in the "Food at Home" component of the Consumer Price Index — the official BLS measure of how fast supermarket prices are rising. It excludes restaurants ("Food Away from Home" is a separate index) and covers the full grocery basket: meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, produce, packaged goods, beverages, and frozen/prepared foods.
Why grocery inflation feels worse than headline CPI
The "Food at Home" category exploded during 2022–23, peaking at 13.5% year-over-year in August 2022 — far higher than the 9% headline inflation peak. Drivers: pandemic supply chains, the Russia–Ukraine war (wheat, vegetable oils, fertilizer), avian flu (eggs/poultry), and labor cost increases throughout the supply chain. Grocery inflation has cooled dramatically since, but consumers still feel the cumulative price level effect — groceries are roughly 25% more expensive than they were in 2020.
What this number tells you
At 2.20% today, groceries are rising slightly slower than headline CPI (3.10%) but the absolute level remains elevated. The "Food at Home" basket weight in CPI is about 8.2% — meaning grocery prices contribute ~0.18 points to today's 3.10% headline inflation. If grocery inflation flips negative (deflation), it would noticeably pull headline CPI down.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
They behave differently. Groceries respond quickly to commodity prices, labor, and supply chains. Restaurants are sticker — they raise menu prices reluctantly, so restaurant inflation lags grocery inflation by 6–18 months. Tracking them separately shows where the inflation pressure actually lives.
Yes — cumulative price level effect. From January 2020 to May 2026, the CPI Food at Home index rose about 27%. The annual rate has cooled, but the price level doesn't roll back unless we see actual deflation (negative YoY readings).
Avian flu (HPAI) killed tens of millions of laying hens in 2022–23, restricting egg supply. Beef prices rose due to drought-induced herd reductions in 2022. These supply shocks fed directly into the Food at Home index — which is why the BLS publishes detailed sub-indexes by category.
Probably not "back down" in absolute terms (that requires deflation, which is rare and usually painful). But the rate of increase has clearly slowed. Today's 2.2% YoY is close to the pre-COVID norm of 1–2%. Continued cooling depends on stable commodity prices and labor markets.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · CUSR0000SAF11 and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.