Special Report

This Is How Much a July 4th Cookout Costs This Year

John Harrington

Published: July 1, 2022 10:00 am

There’s nothing more American than a barbecue on the Fourth of July. This year, the bite that you take out of that juicy hamburger will be nothing compared to the bite that soaring prices – of items typically found at a cookout on the Fourth – will take out of your wallet.

To identify the price of a summer cookout in 2022, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the report Cost of July 4th Cookout 17% Higher Compared to Year Ago from the American Farm Bureau Federation. We considered the current prices for 12 different foods commonly found at summer cookouts as well as their year-over-year price change, all from the AFBF report. The AFBF assumes an average cookout size of 10 people. Items are ordered by their annual change in price.

Consumers will pay $69.68 for their favorite Independence Day cookout foods, a 17% increase from a year earlier, according to the AFBF marketbasket survey. The foods include cheeseburgers, homemade potato salad, and ice cream.

The largest year-over-year price increase is for ground beef, according to the survey. The retail price for 2 pounds of ground beef is $11.12, up 36% from 2021. Other foods with a more than 30% price hike are: 3 pounds of center cut pork chops; 2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts; and 32 ounces of pork and beans. (Here is the price of bacon and eggs the year you were born.)

Vanilla ice cream, potato salad, and hamburger buns all posted double-digit increases from a year ago. The good news for Independence Day celebrants? The cost of strawberries and sliced cheese declined.

The reasons behind the runaway cost of cookout items – beef, hamburger buns, potato salad, and lemonade, for example – is because of the well-chronicled issues of inflation, caused in part by supply chain disruption due to the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (The price of this household item is soaring.)

Inflation rose 8.6% in May compared to May last year, according to the consumer price index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in early June. The increase was across the board, with the indexes for shelter, gasoline, and food the biggest contributors to price hikes.

Click here to see the price of a summer cookout in 2022

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2 pints of strawberries
> 2022 price: $4.44
> Yoy price change: -16%

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1 pound of sliced cheese
> 2022 price: $3.53
> Yoy price change: -13%

Source: dtimiraos / iStock via Getty Images

16-ounce bag of potato chips
> 2022 price: $4.71
> Yoy price change: -4%

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13-ounce bag of chocolate chip cookies
> 2022 price: $4.31
> Yoy price change: +7%

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Half-gallon of vanilla ice cream
> 2022 price: $5.16
> Yoy price change: +10%

Mmm... hamburger buns (CC BY 2.0) by jeffreyw

8 hamburger buns
> 2022 price: $1.93
> Yoy price change: +16%

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2.5 pounds of homemade potato salad
> 2022 price: $3.27
> Yoy price change: +19%

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2.5 quarts of fresh-squeezed lemonade
> 2022 price: $4.43
> Yoy price change: +22%

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3 pounds of center cut pork chops
> 2022 price: $15.26
> Yoy price change: +31%

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2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts
> 2022 price: $8.99
> Yoy price change: +33%

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32 ounces of pork & beans
> 2022 price: $2.53
> Yoy price change: +33%

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2 pounds of ground beef
> 2022 price: $11.12
> Yoy price change: +36%