A classic backyard cookout for 10 people now costs $73.82, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 2026 summer cookout cost survey — a 4 percent jump, or about $2.90 more, than the same basket cost in 2025. That works out to roughly $7.38 a head for burgers, sides, and dessert, and it’s the number worth knowing before Labor Day grilling season closes out summer on September 7. The Farm Bureau conducts this survey annually by pricing out the same shopping list of cookout staples at grocery stores nationwide, and while the headline figure comes from its early-summer check-in, the ingredients in that basket — ground beef, chicken, pork, chips, and potato salad fixings — are the same ones filling carts for Labor Day weekend. If anything, the trajectory matters more than the exact date: prices have been climbing basket-wide all year, and there’s little reason to expect a Labor Day version of the same grocery run to look cheaper.
Where the Money Actually Goes
The Farm Bureau’s breakdown shows the increase isn’t spread evenly across the cooler. Two pounds of ground beef now run $14.06, up 5.5 percent and described in the survey as the highest beef price recorded in the survey’s history. Pork chops climbed 4.7 percent to $14.79 for three pounds, and chicken breasts rose a more modest 3.5 percent to $8.06 for two pounds. On the side-dish end, a can of pork and beans jumped 13.8 percent to $3.06, and two pints of strawberries — squeezed by a Florida freeze earlier in the year — rose 12.4 percent to $5.27. Ice cream, the traditional cookout closer, ticked up 5.3 percent to $5.99 for a half-gallon.
The Two Things Getting Cheaper
Not everything in the basket moved in the wrong direction. Potato salad actually dropped 17.8 percent to $2.91, driven by falling egg prices, and a bag of potato chips slipped slightly to $4.76. Those two line items are the closest thing to good news in the whole survey, and they’re worth leaning into if a host is trying to trim the total: sides built around potatoes and eggs are, for the moment, the cheapest place at the table to be generous.
What the Farm Bureau Says It Means
Farm Bureau economist Faith Parum offered a useful frame for the increase in the organization’s own release: “This year, the basket is a bit more expensive, but it’s actually holding pace with inflation,” she said, noting that the broader Consumer Price Index has climbed roughly 4.2 percent over the same period. In other words, cookout costs aren’t outrunning the rest of the economy this year so much as keeping stride with it — which is a modest silver lining, even if it doesn’t make the grocery bill feel any smaller. Coverage of the same data from Fox Business confirmed the record-high beef price as the standout figure in this year’s survey, calling it the most expensive ground beef the Farm Bureau has ever recorded.
Why the Timing Still Matters for Labor Day
Labor Day sits at an odd spot on the calendar for grocery shoppers — it’s the last big cookout of the season, but it comes after most of the year’s beef and produce price increases have already worked their way through the supply chain. That means the Farm Bureau’s mid-year snapshot is, if anything, a floor rather than a ceiling for what a Labor Day spread will run. Ground beef prices in particular tend to hold steady or climb through late summer as grilling demand stays high nationwide, so there’s little reason to expect that record $14.06 to have come back down by the first Monday in September.
How to Cook the Number Down
None of this means Labor Day has to get scaled back. A few swaps can trim a real chunk off that $73.82 without anyone noticing at the table. Bulking out ground beef with breadcrumbs or oats in burger patties stretches the priciest item in the basket further, and mixing in ground pork or turkey cuts the per-pound cost without sacrificing much flavor on the grill. Buying chicken thighs instead of pre-portioned breasts, making potato salad instead of buying it premade, and leaning on the now-cheaper chips and potatoes as the backbone of the spread all push the per-person cost down from that $7.38 baseline. Skipping the ice cream course in favor of a simple fruit salad — built around whatever produce isn’t spiking that week — is another easy trim, since strawberries were one of this year’s steepest increases.
The grill itself isn’t the expensive part of a cookout — the shopping cart is, and this year’s survey shows exactly where to focus the trimming before the last long weekend of summer arrives.
