4 ms·

The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%

• JohnFen 10mo ago
  > According to official metrics It's incredibly hard to have any actual faith in governmental assessments anymore.
  • skippyboxedhero 10mo ago
    If you think about what they are actually trying to measure, it should also be clear that the primary goal of these statistics is to employ economists. There is the raw price data, which is mostly bunk because it uses unrepresentative products. And there is obviously huge political pressure not to make basket adjustments that result in prices going up. And then there are quality adjustments that are completely nonsensical. Worst example is obviously with something like medicine where it just isn't possible to compare the price of drugs that save lives that didn't exist fifty years ago. Unfortunately, economists will forever be in the camp of not understanding the difference between what is measured and what can be useful (and this has serious consequences for policy, for example the understanding within modern economics of long-term economic growth is close to zero which has led to policies focusing heavily on resource usage/intensity, essentially no different to North Korean economic policy in the 50s, due to significantly understated long-term estimates of growth). Hong Kong's government didn't produce economic statistics during its period of rapid growth for this reason.
• manfromchina1 10mo ago
  Moving from LA to SF will definitely give you a sticker shock. I used to buy nice large burritos in DTLA for $10 flat as recently as 2024. That's with tax. Later that year in SF a nice sandwich in random bodegas would cost well over $20(with tax). SF is probably the most eye wateringly expensive city in all of US. It definitely beats NYC.
  • the_sleaze_ 10mo ago
    $25 dollar cocktails in Washington DC. $16 sandwiches from a gas station in Northern Virginia. It's everywhere.
    • ep103 10mo ago
      It is everywhere, but SF really brings it to another level. Its wild.
  • testfrequency 10mo ago
    Food is so much cheaper (and better) in LA than SF. SF has such mediocre food for what you pay compared to any other city I’ve lived in*. You either have to fork over a few hundred to experience some of the stellar fine dining options in the city, or end up at some brunch place that’s probably pretty decent but you’re not leaving without at least $100 between two people. The good food in the Bay Area I’ve always found to be in a shopping center or random places sprinkled all round the south bay and peninsula. Which, may sound similar to how LA is too, but I’d argue LA has overall a healthier food scene and variety of amazing food all within central LA - and most importantly, more affordable. * besides Seattle
    • buildbot 10mo ago
      I love Seattle and it’s food but yeah it’s really expensive by default - I haven’t spent enough time in the Bay recently to compare but it feels equally pricy. There are still reasonable & very good places though you just have to know.
      • testfrequency 10mo ago
        I’ve lived in both and I can say confidently I spent more on groceries, dining out, and drinks overall for me in Seattle…despite not feeling like the care or quality was always there. The hardest thing about Seattle for me was the lack of food variety. I could only eat so much teriyaki and pho..I know these are fighting words..but I actually would rank Portland above Seattle strictly on food alone. Portland has a great food scene, and it’s not obscenely priced. Locals would (passive aggressively) remind me though how amazing Seattle is, and I should be grateful for no income tax
• mproud 10mo ago
  Yes, but I think some of this is also the increase in food worker minimum wage in California.
  • martinky24 10mo ago
    Which is a good thing!
    • beastman82 10mo ago
      Inflation is a good thing?
      • martinky24 10mo ago
        Paying people a livable wage is a good thing.
        • baggy_trough 10mo ago
          More unemployment is a bad thing.
        • Ray20 10mo ago
          For most poor people, raising the minimum wage doesn't mean increasing their income, but rather reducing it to zero. It literally prohibits workers from working for low wages, effectively putting them out of job.
          • throwaway132448 10mo ago
            Just because you like to be trodden on doesn’t mean everyone does.
        • Aloisius 10mo ago
          After inflation, is it a livable wage?
    • trentnix 10mo ago
• etchalon 10mo ago
  I'm sorry, but I was told "affordability" was a hoax.
• OGEnthusiast 10mo ago
  Feels like SF is over-exposed to specifically the OpenAI bubble/valuation popping. Outside of Mission Bay and SoMa, consumer spending and transit activity is still largely below pre-pandemic levels.
• superkuh 10mo ago
  People in SF have more money (on average) and so those selling things there price higher. Compare the average salary for $jobdescription in SF vs Minneapolis. The entire (very small) region has been a bubble of higher income and prices for a long time and is getting worse. It feeds on itself like a ratchet.
  • jonny_eh 10mo ago
    Did you read the article?
    • superkuh 10mo ago
      I did. Did you notice that in the article they're talking about how the price (89%) spanned a decade at least? This seems to align with what I've said in my above coment. >That's an 89% increase over a decade, and a 32% jump in just two years. San Francisco has the highest indexed concert ticket prices in the nation, roughly 29% above the norm, according to analysis from Tickethold. Of course prices are increasing everywhere across the USA. I am just pointing out that San Francisco has always been significantly more expensive than everywhere else even before the last handful of years. And the reason for this is very clear: SF people have been paid more on average. Probably because the demand for the small area (so nice climate wise, job availability wise, etc) exceeds availability for those things and drives up other prices. And then the ratcheting like I said.
      • jonny_eh 10mo ago
        It's the cost. The high cost of labor, due to the high cost of real estate, due to the limited availability. This is ultimately the cause of booth what you've pointed out (the average high salaries in the area) AND the high cost of local goods and services. If we had more affordable real estate, the average income of residents wouldn't be so high, and the costs of other things also wouldn't be so high.
  • mekdoonggi 10mo ago
    I'm in the Minneapolis area, and $14 for a burrito seems completely normal. I might look at that price differently if my spacious, modern 2 bed apartment cost more than $2400.
• BugsJustFindMe 10mo ago
  It's funny watching people in this thread talk about food in LA being so much cheaper than in SF, because in my humble experience LA is also quite expensive compared to pretty much everywhere else in the country.
  • kwhat4 10mo ago
    My local family owned tacoria now sells a $14 burrito in LA. The rest of the prices outlined in this article are also on par with LA pricing. It's hard to find a more expensive place to live the California.
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  • goda90 10mo ago
    I was in Orange county for work a few weeks ago and the prices for Mexican food were comparable to what I see in the Midwest but portions were larger.
  • 01100011 10mo ago
    Are they talking about the city of Los Angeles or "LA"? LA can include Pomona or even San Bernardino, Riverside and OC. The prices in Silverlake are not the same as the prices in Pomona.
  • potato3732842 10mo ago
    LA has a low end to a lot of things that is simply missing and not an option in SF Applebees is gonna be the same in both places but in LA you're gonna be much more able to find some categorically lower and lower priced end non-franchised place.
• radley 10mo ago
  > A burrito that cost $5.50 in 2014 is now $13.95. They haven't been that cheap since the 90s. 10 years ago, they were around $10.
  • triclops200 10mo ago
    Read TFA. They got the price from the menu they were comparing to in 2014.
    • radley 10mo ago
      Ah, thanks! Looking through the Yelp pics, the price rose to $8 in 2016 and $9.50 by 2019. I expect Mission growth and rent increases have been a big factor.
  • xnorswap 10mo ago
    It seems backed up by a photo of it in 2014? It's unreadable at this scale, but I assume they have a better quality version they got the price from.
  • lelanthran 10mo ago
    > They haven't been that cheap since the 90s. 10 years ago, they were around $10. You do realise that the article has actual photos of the menus from different years, right? What's your hypothesis here? They photoshopped the images?
    • radley 10mo ago
      No hypothesis, I didn't read far enough.
  • BeetleB 10mo ago
    They're looking at actual 2014 menus. But yeah, it's likely an outlier in 2014 to be that cheap. More like $7-8. Locally (not in SV), one can still find "cheap" burritos at Mexican joints. By cheap I mean $11-12. In one local restaurant, they bumped up burritos from about $11 to $18 within a year. I stopped going there.
• scotty79 10mo ago
  I'm not quite sure what official inflation index measures but you can get rough estimate of how much value dollar lost if you compare prices of bitcoin in dollars and euro at the beginning and the end of the year. More concretely, if you converted 1btc to euro or dollar at the beginning of the year and back to btc at the end, how much fewer btc you'd end up with if you went through dollar as oppossed to euro.
• ihaveajob 10mo ago
  $3.50 latte at Ritual sounds preposterous looking back...
• alephnerd 10mo ago
  If you shop at tech bro places you will get tech bro prices (I blame Mission Control). For example, Taqueria Cancun on 19th as mentioned versus other options a couple blocks east or south, or in the parts of SF that have remained Latiné. Furthermore, a lot of these places continue to give an ethnic discount - especially when paying in cash - because someone of the same ethnic group will most likely remain a repeat customer and can induce negative WoM in tightly knit ethnic communities.
  • klipklop 10mo ago
    > a lot of these places continue to give an ethnic discount - especially when paying in cash This is _not_ a thing at all. Maybe you observed it once, but this is HIGHLY unusual.
• the__alchemist 10mo ago
  Burritos are ~$15 in Raleigh NC; feels in line with other non-sitdown restaurant options in most places in the US.
• buildbot 10mo ago
  Mmm 14$ sounds nice! In Seattle a burrito is hard to find for under 17$ IMO. For example, a local and delicious place in a nearby liquor store has 18$ burritos: https://eltacolocoballard.com/seattle-ballard-el-taco-loco-food-menu https://eltacolocoballard.com/seattle-ballard-el-taco-loco-f... Or a longtime establishment of the area offers 15$ ones - https://www.gorditosmexicanfood.com/menu#menu=burritos https://www.gorditosmexicanfood.com/menu#menu=burritos Granted these are massive compared to basically anywhere else.
  • RickS 10mo ago
    Seattle is truly the worst of all worlds on food. Base price, delivery price, hours, quality, variety, we are omnidirectionally chopped. I'm in Portland often, SF sometimes, LA rarely, and in all of them you can get better variety for less money later at night.
    • eddythompson80 10mo ago
      Yeah, Seattle food is a lost cause. There is really no reliable-available-everyday type places here anymore. It's all becoming "super quirky and artisanal-we pretend to grow our own lettuce and provide great vibe" $25(+tip please to support our essential workers) BLT. Then, predictably, the place closes down once their lease is over. Rinse and repeat. Even the old reliable mom and pop owned places (Tiryaki, Thai, Pho, Sichuanese) have all been hallowed out by what's been happening in the ID and have been transitioning to that "great vibe" model too as a last-ditch effort to survive. There was a bit of a resurgence of food trucks those last couple of years, but laws limit what can be made in a food truck.
• sxp 10mo ago
  > And for San Franciscans, the price on the menu is rarely the price you pay. Add in sales tax, a default 18-20% tip on the tablet screen, an SF Mandate or Cost of Living Fee, and 8.625% sales tax. Soon that seemingly cheap $15 lunch might be $20. This is a key metric that the article doesn't properly account for when it comes to food prices. The asshole restaurateurs got an exception to the anti "drip-pricing" law that required all fees to be rolled into the listed cost: https://oag.ca.gov/hiddenfees https://oag.ca.gov/hiddenfees
  • 01100011 10mo ago
    "But the restaurant industry is special." Only in the restaurant world are customers on the hook for ensuring a living wage. It's a stupid system but is culturally entrenched.
    • trillic 10mo ago
      A significant portion of the bottom and middle segments of the restaurant industry have been enshittified. Lower quality, less service, and higher prices. Meal prepping, cooking at home, and fine dining only.
• RickS 10mo ago
  This tracks with.... basically everything except the official numbers. I routinely see people who record their grocery prices finding increases that start in the 40% range. Certainly true for soda and snacks in my experience. There's a new second-order concern where I'm now alarmed by low prices. For example: I have no idea what johnsonville did to keep their brats at $4.99 over the past 5 years while the more local ones shot to $9-11, but it makes me grossed out and skeptical. As the article notes, opposite effect in tech. I was perusing ipad mini and mac mini yesterday and couldn't believe what I paid $500 for in 2021. The amount of apple you get for $350 on the refurb market is absolutely batty. You can get a shitty intel mini for well under 100 bucks. Tempted to start slinging them around like chonky raspberry pis.
  • Espressosaurus 10mo ago
    Yeah, my basket of goods hasn't changed and is closer to doubling in price comparing 2018 to today. Some items I've been tracking have quadrupled since 2010 or thereabouts. Your basic cup-of-noodles used to be $.20 to $.25 and is now at over $1. Beef prices are much like egg prices, quadrupling at best. Chicken is high but sales prices keep it at a modest doubling relative to previous sales for the most part. More like triple for whole chickens. Expect the computer prices to rise since OpenAI bought out the next year's supply from two of the biggest RAM/NAND manufacturers in the world.
  • doctorpangloss 10mo ago
    It’s not complicated. We also imported a lot of really cheap, high quality food from China. And now we don’t. Even if you personally were not buying Chinese tomatoes rebadged as Mexican in Grocery Outlet, the fact that they were one tenth the cost lowered prices on the produce you’ve been buying from Costco and Whole Foods. Indeed, the giant corporations have been litigating the tariffs issue as the single greatest cause. I think people just don’t comprehend that everything was imported, not just clothes and technology.
    • RickS 10mo ago
      If you're referring exclusively to tariffs from the current admin, that doesn't really line up with the timeline on this, which started closer to the beginning of covid. I don't have a firm evidence-based take on the causality, but the vibes based take is a combination of actual input cost shock and bullwhip from covid, plus a lot of opportunism and greedflation/shrinkflation from corps that used the cover of the legitimate (BOM-driven) cost increases to squeeze hard on comparatively illegitimate cost increases. This situation was totally F'd way before 47 took office. And then the tarrifs hit, which certainly does hurt. I was making desserts w nice belgian chocolate that went from $65 per 5lb to $90. So I'm not discounting the pain there, but the bulk of this effect seems to predate the tariffs, unless there are some from 46 admin or before that I'm not aware of.
• ZeroConcerns 10mo ago
  So, ehhm, yeah, I sort-of question the data in this article. A US$5.50 burrito in Downtown SF in 2014? Nah... even Taco Bell takeout was already more expensive than that at the time. Also: sure, some places overdo it on the pricing: I distinctly remember walking out of a Rotterdam (somewhere in The Netherlands) establishment due to them charging 25 Euros for a lunch sandwich, like 2 decades ago, despite this not being a fancy place at all. No inflation in sight, just greed and/or an inability to read the target audience...
  • 9x39 10mo ago
    They said they used Yelp photos, which seem like you can verify this. Here's one from 2014, $5.50 https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-canc%C3%BAn-san-francisco-5?menu-item=super-burrito&select=qfzZwNpjnfi1QNEmC27N9A&tab=menu https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-canc%C3%BAn-san-fra... Here's one from 2015, $6.99 https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-canc%C3%BAn-san-francisco-5?menu-item=super-burrito&select=WD0RygDMWuakr6HhQ53VNQ&tab=menu https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-canc%C3%BAn-san-fra...
    • ZeroConcerns 10mo ago
      Yeah, I did in fact read the original article, and the glossy (unreadable) and undated photographs did not convince me. Therefore, the Taco Bell comparison, and the rest of my comment.
      • Aloisius 10mo ago
        I used to eat there regularly. It had been $4.99 for years and jumped to to $5.50 in 2014. $5.50 - dated March 14, 2014: https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-cancun-san-francisco?select=mmGWuAhEjaC0Bm4t3UBa3Q https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-cancun-san-francisc... $5.50 - dated February 28, 2014: https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-cancun-san-francisco?select=yaD92eiYSGgAHrfb5-krKA https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/taqueria-cancun-san-francisc... Mind, that's a regular burrito and it was one of the cheaper ones in SF. El Farolito was around $6 at the time. La Taqueria started at $8 for people who liked to splurge. El Papolote's yuppie burritos were like $10. The price at Taqueria Cancun jumped again in 2014 iirc after La Taqueria won best burrito in the US normalized the higher price and got them some press (Taqueria Cancun was in one of the final brackets).
• STRiDEX 10mo ago
  The other thing i've noticed about burritos is that more places take card or apple pay now. When I moved to sf in 2015 many of them were cash only, same with bars. I always assumed some amount of cash was being shuffled under the table.
  • 9x39 10mo ago
    And when you take cards or things like tap to pay, you pay higher rates as a biz which gets factored into overall prices. But...good luck being cash only in a lot of places. I still carry cash because services like massage and housecleaning and some restaurants are happy to give good price breaks for cash payment, but I also love Apple Pay as a consumer.
• BeetleB 10mo ago
  I did something similar with restaurant prices 2 years ago. I would pick a random restaurant, and look at user uploaded photos of the menu. It was wild to see several places raise prices 2-3 times in just one year!
• Lucasoato 10mo ago
  Last year I attended the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. This is a global event, in which people coming from different countries gather together to showcase their projects, chasing the dream. Many are independent developers, looking for the opportunity or investment that could change their life. To me, the fact that crêpes were sold at 20$ and cans of coke at 10$ at the event was a shame. The organizers turned what was once a great event to bring everyone together into a way to scalp even more indie game developers. The price to partecipate as a company was so high that even big names boycott it.
  • alephnerd 10mo ago
    > To me, the fact that crêpes were sold at 20$ and cans of coke at 10$ at the event was a shame... They can price as such because such purchases tend to be expensable during business travel. Corporate conferences like GDC, RSA, etc aren't targeted at ICs - they're meant to essentially be a "safe space" for vendors to meet with prospective clients.
  • JohnFen 10mo ago
    > cans of coke at 10$ at the event Damn! It's been a couple of decades since I attended the Game Developer conference (thank goodness), but when I used to go, cans of soda were free.
• hackingonempty 10mo ago
  The article claims "a burrito that cost $5.50 in 2014 is now $13.95" but I just checked one of the better SF Mission taquerias that has a web site with prices (Papalote) and used the Way-Back Machine and a carne asada burrito was $9.10 in Jan 2014 and is now $13.75. That's only 1.5X not 2.5X increase. According to the BLS CPI calculator, that $9.10 in 2014 has $12.61 of buying power as of a couple months ago, or $13.75 in late 2025 dollars is $9.92 in 2014. The price has only exceeded inflation by 9%. ** edit in 2014 it was only $1 to make it "super" (cheese, guac, and crema) now it is $3.50. So more like $10 vs $17+ now
  • alephnerd 10mo ago
    There are multiple cheaper Taquerias within walking distance of Taqueria Cancun as well. The issue is non-natives have heard of Taqueria Cancun so their clientele is overwhelmingly transplants.
  • doctorpangloss 10mo ago
    That may be. Okay, do you think you’d start looking for another opportunity if your cushy current job was like, “we’re reducing your salary by 9%”? You probably drive to a different gas station to save literally cents on a refill. It’s not so simple to frame the subjective feeling of what 9% is, even if I agree with you that the burrito isn’t that important.
    • hackingonempty 10mo ago
      You're right.
• linguae 10mo ago
  I quit eating out in the Bay Area over a year ago (except for socializing) because the prices feel painfully expensive to me while my pay hasn’t increased anywhere near the rate of restaurant price hikes. $14 for a burrito that cost roughly half as much a decade ago is painful, while my salary hasn’t doubled (I’m not a FAANG engineer). It’s not just burritos; it’s $10+ fast food combo meals, $15 deli sandwiches, etc. Prices steadily increased before COVID-19, but I didn’t feel priced out of eating out until sometime around 2022-23, when prices seemed to have exploded. I make six figures but I have resorted to making eating out a rare treat in order for me to maintain my financial goals. This harkens back to my childhood in a low-income family, though I do remember my parents taking advantage of fast food deals in the 1990s and 2000s. I pack lunches and dinners to work, and I regularly cook, sometimes resorting to frozen meals for convenience’s sake. Eating out is reserved for social gatherings and for travel. What’s interesting is the situation isn’t that much better in Sacramento, my hometown and where I visit family members. While Sacramento has lower housing prices, eating out isn’t substantially cheaper. On the flipside, I’m in Tokyo now on a trip, where eating out feels cheap. $10 in the Bay Area or even Sacramento doesn’t get a satisfying meal these days (it’s not even enough for a fast food combo meal in many cases), but ¥1,500 (roughly $10) in Tokyo can buy a satisfying meal. Even ¥750 can buy a satisfying meal if one looks harder. The situation in the Bay Area is demoralizing. I’m still in the Bay because of my career and because of social ties. It’s one thing to be priced out of buying a house, but it’s another thing to feel priced out of eating out. I don’t know if the situation is better in other parts of the United States, though; I’ve heard of people in other states complain about the high price of eating out these days.
  • paleotrope 10mo ago
    It's not just SF. The $10 lunch of 2015 is now $15. Default tipping of 20% on things that we never tipped on in 2015 (takeout, fast food) is also adding alot to the total cost. I don't know how people are affording the various delivery services and their fees on top of it.
    • linguae 10mo ago
      I see a lot of references to a “K-shaped” economy where there happens to be enough well-off people who are continuing to spend to push prices further upward, even though more people are forced to cut back since they can’t afford higher prices. There’s still enough people ordering $14 burritos and having them delivered in order to sustain both $14 burritos and the delivery companies. It’s the same with the RAM situation. Prices will continue to skyrocket as long as there are enough buyers paying whatever prices the sellers set.
• postsantum 10mo ago
  Buenos Aires, I had a $14 burrito yesterday (average mexican restaurant) Should I blame SF inflation or what?
• theturtle 10mo ago
  [dead]
• cosmicgadget 10mo ago
  > San Francisco's Consumer Price Index increased just 2.5% year-over-year, well below the post-pandemic peaks. The Federal Reserve has declared victory. But is the inflation crisis really over? Monetary policy is months to years ahead of what you see at the counter. See also the great money printing of 2020.