Beef costs more this year, and families feel it right as school starts. Prices are running 11.8% above a year earlier, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture expects the full-year increase to hit 10.7%. That squeeze lands the same weeks families take on a record $43.3 billion in back-to-school spending.
Yusra Millenbaugh feeds three teenage boys in Goodyear, Arizona, and goes through 2 to 3 pounds of ground beef most weeks. She has started buying it only when it goes on sale. “Ground beef used to be the cheap option for dinner,” she said. Eighty-twenty runs $6.99 a pound at full price near her. She waits for $2.97.
Ground beef averaged $6.83 a pound in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The USDA traces the increase to a national cattle herd that fell to 86.2 million head in January, its smallest since 1951. Chicken prices, by contrast, are effectively unchanged. Those costs are landing in the same weeks families take on back-to-school spending, as 62% have already started shopping since July of this year according to the National Retail Federation.
What ground beef costs now
The increase traces back to a cattle supply that has been shrinking for years. Beef cows fell 1% to 27.6 million head on Jan. 1. USDA’s forecast carries a wide range, from 7.2% to 14.6%.
Drought drove much of the decline, pushing ranchers to sell off breeding stock they have been slow to replace. Even with cattle prices near records, producers largely haven’t moved to rebuild.
“There is nothing to suggest any relief from high beef prices,” said Derrell Peel, an agricultural economics professor at Oklahoma State University, who spoke to CBS News in April.
Then the school year starts
August brings its own bills. Families with K-12 students plan to spend an average of $863.86 getting children ready for the school year, about $5 more than a year ago, according to a survey of 7,677 consumers by the National Retail Federation conducted in early July.
Shoppers are approaching it cautiously. Forty-seven percent told the group they planned to buy only what was necessary to start the year and replenish later, and 46% were waiting for better deals. Seventy-eight percent said they expected to pay more than last year.
“Affordability is a concern for families and a top priority for retailers as we enter the back-to-school season,” Mark Mathews, the retail federation’s chief economist and executive director of research, said in a statement.
Not every forecast agrees on the scale. Deloitte’s survey of 1,207 parents put expected spending at $557 per child, essentially flat year over year but 6% lower adjusted for inflation. Fifty-seven percent said they expect the economy to worsen over the next six months, the highest share since 2020.
The grocery bill is moving faster in some aisles than others. USDA expects food-at-home prices to rise 2.7% this year while beef and veal climb higher than last year, meaning the meat case is absorbing a disproportionate share of what families feel at checkout.
What returns with the school year isn’t only the spending. Practices, homework and earlier mornings compress the hours between the last bell and dinner.
“Once school starts, weeknights become more hectic with sports and dinner needs to be on the table in minimal time,” said Shelby Stover, who writes the food blog Fit as a Mama Bear. “This means that I either rely on slow cooker meals or ones I can throw together with a few pre-cooked ingredients.”
That pushes cooking toward the equipment that doesn’t require standing over it. A slow cooker rump roast, started before the morning drop-off, is a cheaper cut of an expensive meat and asks for nothing between then and dinner.
Chicken didn’t move
Not every part of the meat case moved the same way. All-fresh retail beef hit a record $9.64 per pound in April, up 13% from a year earlier, while retail chicken slipped to $2.04 per pound. Overall poultry prices were essentially flat, according to the USDA.
That gap has changed what some home cooks reach for. “The increased price has really reduced how often I make family friendly staple meals like spaghetti, burgers and tacos,” said Michelle Goth of Blackberry Babe. For taco night, she makes shredded salsa chicken.
David Murphy of the food blog FoodnService described the same shift. “I’ve definitely been more mindful about buying ground beef this year and often choose chicken when it’s cheaper,” he said. A chicken tortilla casserole costs less to put on the table than the same dish built on ground beef, and the math has gotten harder to ignore.
Same beef, smaller role
Other households have kept beef and changed how far it goes, but nationally, the demand hasn’t changed. Beef saw the largest dollar growth of any food category ahead of the July 4 holiday, and the USDA reports consumer demand has stayed strong despite record prices. What has changed is the role it plays on the plate.
“I still buy it because it’s versatile, but instead of making it the main part of the meal, I stretch it further,” Stover said. “One package goes a lot further when feeding a larger family.” A ground beef and tater tot casserole is that math in a pan, with potatoes, cheese and a can of soup doing part of the work a second pound would have done.
The pressure is sharpest on ground beef specifically. Much of the lean beef used for grinding comes from cull cows, and beef cow slaughter is down 17.4% this year, a fourth straight year of double-digit declines.
The shift predates this year
None of this started in 2026. Chicken surpassed beef in American per capita consumption in 2010, and USDA projects broiler meat at 105.6 pounds per person this year against roughly 60 pounds of beef.
Part of the gap is structural, as chickens reach market weight in weeks, and most are raised under contract with poultry companies that supply chicks and feed. That keeps supply responsive when demand moves. Cattle run on a far slower clock: the industry is now in year 13 of the current cattle cycle and year eight of contraction, and a rancher deciding today to keep a heifer rather than sell her won’t see beef from her calf for roughly two years.
That difference is why a drought in 2019 still affects what a package of ground beef costs in 2026, and why chicken absorbs price shocks that beef cannot. High prices are accelerating a trend already underway.
Relief isn’t close
Rebuilding a herd is measured in years rather than seasons. A cow produces one calf at a time, and cattle take longer than other livestock to reach slaughter weight. Analysts expect near-record cattle prices to hold into 2028, which means this isn’t a one-semester adjustment but the first of nine months of weeknight dinners at these prices.
Heidi is also a vintage recipe blogger at Real Life of Lulu, where she focuses on recipes that are at least 50 years old, many from her grandparents’ kitchens. She has spent eight years developing and testing vintage recipes for a national online audience.