I suspect a lot of people were living closer to “paycheck to paycheck” state than they realized. No raise plus even 5-10% bumps in food prices feel like a much bigger impact when you’re suddenly running out of money when you never have before.
Same here in Germany, it's crazy how much more we spend on food now. I used to usually spend slightly over 400€ for us two per month, just a few years ago. Nowadays, I struggle to stay below 600€.
But that's not what's happening in this article. The Food Away From Home share has hit an all-time high, and FAFH costs more (because it contains more internalized labor than groceries).
Americans eat out a lot because they are unbelievably rich.
I rarely eat out these days, even lunch. It's just too much money now and not worth the convenience. I pack a lunch to take to work now and prepare breakfast and dinner at home. I might eat out two or three times a month.
The United States has a homeless population bigger than Malta [0][1]. 11.5% of our population -- 38 million people -- live in poverty [2]. The median household income is $74,580 and health insurance for a family of 4 costs $17,244 ($1,437 * 12) per year [3][4]. Average housing expenditure is $24,300 ($2,025 * 12) per year [5]. This leaves $33,036 per year in household income BEFORE taxes are taken in to account.
Meanwhile, the legal requirement for paid parental leave in most places is 0 days. Paid sick leave? 0 days. Notice period for firing an employee? 0 days. Cost of 1 year at a 4 year university? $36,436 [6]. You get the idea.
We're rich compared to developing countries, but we're a far cry from "unbelievably rich".
Hey look, we're just optimizing for the dumb metric. If we ever fix poverty, healthcare, education, child care, sick leave, vacation, car dependence, and housing, the GDP is going to go down by like 95%.
Yes Americans are rich and are also very busy. Life seems to push so fast that I know a lot of people buy food away from home due to a sense that they don’t have time to cook. There must be rich individuals in other cultures who still eat at home because they have more freedom to take the time to do so. Americans on a global scale are rich but I expect that living expenses are so high too that many people who often eat out are still struggling to get by.
Eating at home takes less time than eating out. Maybe about the same if you include washing up and putting everything away.
Getting prepared food via DoorDash, I guess might be quicker, but you're still sitting there for 30-60 minutes in most cases waiting for it to show up. You can roast a chicken and vegetables in the oven in that time.
, but you're still sitting there for 30-60 minutes in most cases waiting for it to show up.
But you aren't sitting! You are doing other things. Spending time with a child, scrolling the internet, watching tv, playing a game, doing housework, and so on.
If you roast a chicken, you still need to prepare it. This takes time. You gotta wait for the oven to heat, and you might need a side. You might need to put them in the oven at different times - that chicken is going to take 1.5 to 2 hours, after all. When everything is said and done, you then need to clean up the mess.
All in all, it will definitely take longer to cook yourself and you could use that time to do other things.
As a sidenote: This seems like a fancy meal. Its been some times since I ate meat or lived in the US, but I remember rotisserie chickens being cheaper than whole chickens from the frozen section at the store. Is it not still that way?
This is entirely situational. Where I am sitting in a central urban neighborhood I can click to reorder my standing order at the Indian restaurant on the corner—this is shockingly straightforward on Google Maps, just search the name of the restaurant and click one button—and it's 1 minute away. I often cook of course, but I don't think of cooking at home as a time-saving device. I think of it as a hobby.
Food is just one component of the CPI so it's possible for food prices to increase a lot even while overall inflation remains low.