Trump promised to reduce food costs on Day 1, but menu prices are up

At a campaign event where tables were festooned with groceries last August, then-candidate President Trump said if elected, he would “immediately bring prices down, starting on Day 1.” But almost 150 days into his second term, menu prices are up over last year, according to new data from Toast.

It will come as no surprise that avian flu-related increases in egg prices have driven up the price of omelets, with the median price on restaurant menus for April is $14.71, up 5.4% YoY. But the price of coffee you wash down those eggs with is up too, with the median price of a nothing-fancy regular cup up 5.1% YoY in May, to $3.50.

Moving beyond breakfast (one hopes), the median price for a beer was up 2.7% YoY in May, to $6.44.

Other menu item YoY median price increases in May, per Toast:

• Cold brew coffee up 4%, to $5.40.
• Burgers up 3.2%, to $14.38.
• Burritos also rose 3.2%, to $13.38.
• Chicken wings up 3.3%, to $13.77.

Results are based on transactions from the ~140,000 restaurant locations on Toast’s digital technology platform.

Tip tip hooray: Toast also analyzed tipping rates, which for full-service restaurants rose a wee bit, from 19.3% in Q4 to 2024 to 19.4% after being flat for the previous three quarters.

While tipping is not as high as the pandemic plateau of 19.9%, Toast noted we’re in the ballpark of pre-pandemic levels, which ranged from 19.5% to 19.7% over 2018 and 2019.

President Trump’s budget megabill that passed in the House proposes exempting those tips from federal taxes, but in the Senate, the no-tax-on-tips is getting some pushback from Republicans.