Your grocery receipt is currently telling two completely different stories. A dozen eggs costs 39 percent less than it did a year ago. A pound of ground beef costs 14.5 percent more. Whether food feels cheaper or brutally more expensive right now depends almost entirely on what you put in the cart.
This morning’s April Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics includes the detailed food tables that make those swings visible item by item. The big picture: grocery prices (what BLS calls food at home) rose 0.7 percent in April after dipping 0.2 percent in March, and stand 2.9 percent above a year ago. That is milder than overall inflation, which hit 3.8 percent on the year thanks largely to energy. Here is where the increases and the relief actually are.
Still climbing: beef, coffee, and tomatoes lead the list
The steepest 12-month increases in the April tables are concentrated in a handful of items:
Tomatoes, up 39.7 percent over the year, including a 15.1 percent jump in April alone, the single worst line in the grocery table. Coffee is up 18.5 percent, with instant coffee up 22.8 percent and roasted coffee up 17.3 percent. Beef and veal are up 14.8 percent, and the pain runs through every cut: uncooked ground beef up 14.5 percent, beef roasts up 17.8 percent, and steaks up 16.1 percent.
Behind those leaders, fresh vegetables overall are up 11.5 percent on the year, with lettuce up 7.9 percent. Frozen fish and seafood is up 12.0 percent, frankfurters are up 10.7 percent, canned fruits are up 9.0 percent, citrus is up 6.5 percent, and candy is up 7.6 percent. Everyday staples posted smaller but real gains: bread up 3.8 percent, bananas up 4.0 percent, apples up 3.1 percent.
Actually cheaper: eggs, butter, cheese, and potatoes
The relief column is shorter but substantial. Eggs are down 39.2 percent from a year ago, by far the largest decline of any grocery item. BLS average price data put a dozen Grade A large eggs at about $2.25 in April, a level that would have seemed unthinkable during the shortages of early 2025.
Butter is down 5.8 percent on the year, margarine is down 4.4 percent, cheese is down 3.1 percent, potatoes are down 3.0 percent, and flour is down 2.8 percent. Chicken is slightly cheaper than a year ago, down 0.7 percent, which makes the beef comparison stark: the two proteins have moved more than 15 percentage points apart in a single year. Dairy as a whole is down 0.6 percent, one of only two major grocery groups below year-ago levels.
What moved just last month
April itself was not a friendly month at the register. Five of the six major grocery groups rose. Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs climbed 1.3 percent in the month, driven by that 2.7 percent April jump in beef. Fruits and vegetables rose 1.8 percent, nonalcoholic beverages rose 1.1 percent, and dairy rose 0.8 percent. Even eggs, despite the huge annual decline, ticked up 1.5 percent on the month, a hint that their long slide may be finding a floor.
The 0.7 percent monthly rise in overall grocery prices was the largest in the months shown in the current release, and it followed a March in which groceries actually got cheaper. One month is not a trend, but it is worth watching whether May continues it when that report arrives June 10.
Why eggs collapsed while beef keeps climbing
The egg story is a supply recovery. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Price Outlook attributes the decline to rebuilding of laying flocks after the 2024 to 2025 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak, which had destroyed tens of millions of birds and sent prices to records. As flocks recovered, prices unwound. USDA currently projects retail egg prices to finish 2026 sharply below 2025 levels.
Beef runs on a slower clock. Cattle herds take years, not months, to expand, so tight supplies keep working through to the meat case long after grocery inflation cools elsewhere. The CPI tables do not explain causes, but the pattern in them, with every beef cut up double digits while chicken is flat, is exactly what a lean cattle supply looks like at retail.
Stretching the grocery dollar this spring
The data suggest specific swaps rather than general belt-tightening. Eggs are the standout cheap protein, at roughly $2.25 a dozen. Chicken beats beef by a wide and growing margin. Potatoes are cheaper than a year ago while most fresh vegetables are not, and butter is one of the few baking staples in decline. On the other side, if coffee, beef, or fresh tomatoes anchor your list, your personal grocery inflation is running far above the official 2.9 percent.
Timing matters too. The items rising fastest right now, beef, coffee, and fresh vegetables, are exactly the ones where sales cycles, freezer space, and store brands pay off most. Buying ground beef only on promotion and freezing it, or switching to a store-brand roast, offsets a double-digit price increase in a way that no coupon on eggs needs to, because eggs already did the work themselves.
One more comparison worth keeping in mind: restaurant prices rose 3.6 percent over the past year, outpacing groceries again. Whatever the meat case is doing, the gap still favors your own kitchen.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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