Flavortown is dead 😔
Flavortown is dead 😔
102 comments
-
No problem, as salaries also trippled in that time
-
Wow, so I did tha math. The official inflation rate factors up to just over 1.5 (50% increase) over the past 16 years. But this meme suggests a factor of 3.58!!! (258% increase)
-
The official inflation rate doesn't include food or energy. It's ridiculous.
-
Food and products have 2.3x'd since just before covid started.
-
The most funny thing was the "I can't eat an iPad" reply, when someone from the Fed tried to explain these mental gymnastics
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704893604576199113452719274
-
It does include food and energy, but they also separately report a "core" inflation that excludes those items because food and energy tend to go up and down.
-
-
Looking at beef in particular, a pound of ground beef has gone up from $2.10/lb in 2008 to $6.20 in 2025.
Chicken breast, on the other hand, has gone from $3.50/lb to about $4.10.
Beef has been getting more expensive faster than inflation basically my whole life, while stuff like chicken, milk, and eggs have been volatile, jumping up and down at times, and stuff like rice and flour have long periods of stability with the occasional big permanent jump.
-
That chicken price is indicative of the increasing size and density of factory farms, which caused the bird flu epidemic in the first place.
-
-
It was on a famous show.
-
It’s prepared food, so the price also depends on wage increase and changes to tip structure in that state. Several states began fair wage for servers after 2008, so the gratuity may now be included in the price of the meal.
-
I would like to say, California instituted a $20 fast food minimum wage which was estimated to cause an 8% increase in overall wages (they already trend high there) but a 1.5% increase in menu prices. To my mind this tracks as wages are kind of small (too small) against ingredients, building lease, etc.
Granted, increasing the wages of everybody in the agricultural supply chain would probably have a bigger effect, but overall I think businesses tend to mcfucking lie about the impact of wage increases on consumer prices.
-
-
-
AI burger meat is my favorite.
-
That's good, cause it's all we'll be able to afford in a few years.
-
You mean your cheese slices don't have more than 4 points?
-
-
In Pulp Fiction (1994) John Travolta's character freaks out over the "5$ milkshake".
-
In 2025 a chocolate shake is 5.49 at the sonic near me. I thought that was expensive but compared to this thread apparently inflation on milkshakes hasn't been to bad. Though I'm pretty sure you can get a $10 shake if you start asking them to add every kind of diabetes candy into it.
-
There's a fast food chain where I live called Nifty Fifty's ('50s themed of course). They have "dessert milkshakes" for $9.85 - basically shakes with a whole extra dessert blended in - and if you get it malted you're at $10.50. TBF they're really fucking good milkshakes, but $10 is ridiculous.
-
-
That would be about $10 today.
-
-
Gentrification came for flavortown.
Rent is now $4000/mth. No loitering.
-
One of my parents said that steaks were 35 cents when they were kids.
I am not looking forward to my Walmart cheese & breadstick snacks costing $70 bucks for a set of five.
-
Guess what will happen to food prices in the US when farmers cannot exploit cheap migrants anymore...
-
Not to worry - they'll be replaced with children and prisoners and robots.
-
-
Being on a food TV show and becoming slightly famous therefor allows you to increase your prices and still keep all the seats filled. The best burger place near me has increased to $10 from $5 over roughly the same time period, in keeping with the increase in beef prices over that time.
-
The CEO's, shareholders and the 1% need to make more! There is no fucking way I am going to spend $17.00 for a fucking cheeseburger.
-
Yup. As soon as I see a fancy toothpick in the picture, I know I should just leave.
-
-
When Bob's Burgers started airing the burger of the day was $5.95. This used to be a reasonable price for a burger.
-
We're not in flavor town anymore, Toto.
-
Do we really not see that being on that show might have something to do with that?
-
I mean, it probably had an impact, but even the 1/4 pounder with cheese meal at mcdonalds is 12 dollars here
-
-
Norway has been considered to be super-expensive among tourists and others looking in from abroad. However, Norwegians going to the US really have to mind their spending nowadays, especially when eating out. Forcing employees to rely on tips to get above slave wage is generally not a thing in Europe, so the price we see on the menu is what we expect to pay.
If you go to a gas station near an airport in Western Norway, you can get a massive 300g burger (3/4 lb) with added cheese and bacon for about 200 kroner, which is $19. If you want something that normal people can finish, a regular 150g cheeseburger is about $12. A McDonald’s double cheeseburger is 43 kroner, or $4.12. If you order a burger at a restaurant or a pub, you’ll probably be spending about $25 for a bacon cheeseburger with included fries. You’re not expected to tip in Norway.
Considering that the prices Americans here refer to don’t include taxes and tips, I’m actually pretty sure it would be more expensive to eat out in the US than in Norway, and average pay for a waiter/waitress here is about $41 000 per year.
-
Forcing employees to rely on tips to get above slave wage is generally not a thing in Europe
It is in England (which while not in the EU, it is in Europe). And unlike the US, they will try to guilt you into a big auto tip.
-
I've lived in London for seven years, never felt there was pressure or expectations of tips, though there were options to tip on the card terminal occasionally. But yes, wages in London are shit (unless you're a banker), so if I could afford to leave 50p in the pub jar, I would.
-
-
-
According to the US Dept of Labor and Statistics, ground chuck cost $2.83/lb in March 2008, and 5.85/lb in March 2025. If i can basic math, that’s an increase of
206106%.Edit: Math hard.
-
106%
-
That is an increase of 106%
-
Well, at least you can do basic logic…
-
US department of Labor and Statistics
You say? Ooh I know this, a direct Survey can give the enumerator data for a final presentating about the unemployment rate is!
(This has been an Any Austin tribute)
-
-
$17 for a burger, even if it really did look like the picture, which we all know it doesn't, is way too much. No, thank you.
I pay $12/day to feed myself. I make all of my own meals at home, I haven't eaten out since the pandemic. I formed the habit, and just kept cooking at home as prices got ridiculous. My diet is excellent, mostly fresh vegetables, and organic chicken.
-
It,s still "cheap" for what goes into producing a beef patty. Impossible meat is just as expensive and you don't have to feed and care and torture an animal to produce it.
-
-
$10 Aud gets you a proper burger in Oz at a bakery or takeaway spot, you'll pay $20+ Aud inc chips/fries in a pub/bistro, but either way you have to tackle them to stop them putting fucking pickled beetroot on it first, dark times all round indeed..
-
Holy cow, where do you live that Burgers are still $10 anywhere.
-
Suburban fish and chip shops that have been around for 30 years and also sell either souvlaki or an assortment of chinese dishes.
-
I had a double smash cheeseburger for 9€ on friday in germany.
160g meat
-
Yeah local bakeries still do them for $10, proper fresh buns and salad, still do schnitzel rolls with proper chicken for that price too, not with a big processed chicken nugget pretending to be a schnitzel...
-
-
-
Burgers are fine-dining now. Still trying to find cheap food that's nutritious and doesn't contain too much fiber for medical reasons. Eventually that will be fine dining prices too.
-
Coming out of left field here, but… scaling beef production is not very sustainable?
Like, unless it’s a rare treat, I feel like beef has to go artificial or prices keep going up, even if wealth distribution is worked out.
-
I mean, I agree, but beef consumption in the US has dropped in the past 20 years. And you can find similar price stories for all meal prices, regardless of ingredients.
-
True, to an extent. But the price of a pound of hamburger at the grocery store has gone up relatively equal to inflation.
In a lot of places, minimum wage has raise 3x to when it originally was. But they're paying this wage bumps off and just a handful of sales.
Commercial real estate is probably up about 3x from where it was when we were eating $4.75 bodacious bacon cheeseburgers from Roy Rogers
I think, pretty much, we're looking at disproportionately high real estate costs and greed.
-
-
Carl's Jr. $5 Burger used to mock this bullshit. It cost $3 and it was fucking amazing.
-
Here in Japan, a chain has a cheese burger with beef from Kobe, caramelized onions, and gravy made from the drippings for 7.50USD Half that if you want it with regular beef.
I investigated why things are so cheap and businesses can have the weirdest hours (there's a bar in Tokyo that's only open for 5 hours a week on fridays), they tax unused commercial property (for certain definitions of unused, like in rural areas just throwing some gravel down and letting your neighbor park there for a few bucks can be enough to dodge the tax), so companies offer extremely competitive rates to get businesses in. The .4% interest rate and very cheap remodeling costs (except plumbers for some reason) serve to keep startup more accessible, so places don't have to be super profitable to exist. The taxes work in conjunction with the interest rates to keep banks and capital firms from just buying everything up with the free money to establish a local monopoly and drive up prices. There's probably other things driving down home and commercial property costs, it's mindboggling to see a 3 floor+attic, 800sqft/floor building in the center of a city with 10 million people and have the business owner say he's renting it because the owner wanted 2.5m to buy the whole thing, and that was too much.
I know China manages to keep commercial property somewhat cheap by having 5 year plans and SoEs/universities guarantee the commercial sectors have the inputs such as steel, concrete, and skilled labor they'll need at a specific price point, but I've never managed to talk to someone about tax policies and the like.
-
Uhg. All of the commercial real estate in the US is mortgaged and the owners just roll it over continuously - allowing the banks to set policy in contract to not reduce the $/sqft of commercial real estate. So everything here is just empty and the owners can write off the empty stores as losses on their taxes to offset the taxes from their profits.
There are so many things that can be done to fix the US but they chose to triple-down on the approaches that broke everything. Sigh. I'm really happy to hear Japan figured out the right balance. It'd be amazing if those best practices could be imported but I'm sure they'll start tarriffing ideas soon too.
-
-
That seems to track. A local place near me burgers have gone from around 10 bucks about 7 years ago to 17-18 bucks a burger. Seems to be the going rate these days
-
In-N-Out
Is the objectively superior choice
-
rotatingsandwiches.com mentioned! Probably one of the best website on the internet icl
-
I miss in n out but at least my current state has a cheap burger joint. Its not as good but the cheapest option is like 2.50 which im not sure how that's financially possible tbh
-
Man in my country the trash burger joints (the burgers are good they just look or feel nothing like classical burgers, they put in a ton of salad and shit to make it bigger) used to do 1.80 and such. The most famous one did a gigantic one for I think 2.50 back in.... 2013. Same burger now is 6.50
In our case the minimum salary has nearly tripled, so it's kinda OK, but it's kinda sad that economic growth is just canceled out by rising prices.
-
-
hail corporate
-
Nice animation, but their burgers, at least around here, are atrocious. Really the worst of the worst.
-
-
What 'Murica thinks flavour is: fat, salt, sugar, shit.
-
Cheeseburger with bacon is a quintessential white man food.
Muslims and Jews cannot eat it. Indians are forbidden too. Asians don’t tolerate lactose and other minorities can’t afford it nowadays.
When on some day you feel cultural superiority in your veins, order a cheeseburger with bacon and know that you are amongst the selected few who can savour this delicacy
Put on a Burger King hat too for a good measure and order it sitting in your SUV. Celebrate this wonderful country
-
The Christian Bible has the same restrictions about eating pigs, but they just ignore it. A lot of Jewish people in the US do as well.
-
Muslims and Jews cannot eat it
Those are religions, not races.
other minorities can’t afford it nowadays.
Because minorities are poor?
Asians don’t tolerate lactose
Neither do I, but I'm having that ice cream and destroying that toilet.
Stop being weird. It's unnecessary.
-
-
Someone should tell the rest of the world that fat, sugar, and salt aren't allowed.
-
-
Pave Flavortown, put up a parking lot.
-
people used to think I was on crazy pills because I for some reason used to point to 2008 as my favorite nostalgia year.
Nothing particularly major happened with mine, no sports team championship, no graduation, no first date, nothing like that, and my family was for the most part, well insulated from the financial crisis, we lived in a country that was less impacted anyway
2008 was just another year in the 2000s, I only remember it so well because of the small little gaming communities I had joined online when I was 16, Still talk to and hang out with them today at 32.
-
-
While it’s never been a better time to be forced to learn how to cook, a lot of people are more stressed and more overworked than they’ve ever been and even in the pre-union days they often had someone cooking and cleaning for them(I’m glad that women have equal rights and autonomy now but the point remains). Fact is, for a lot of people I really understand the hesitation. I can cook just fine, and try not to eat out, but I will find myself just doing crackers/cheese/meat instead of cooking a full meal just out of a lack of motivation.
-
-
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2008?amount=4.75 About $7 today, for those curious.
-
A "craft burger" with fries is 15€ in Germany. And normal burger meal is like half that.
-
I can get a Whopper Meal (includes fries and a drink) for $8.50CAD ($6.13 in fashy bucks) with a coupon or on Whopper Wednesdays.
If you're gonna be an elitist about ground beef of all things, you deserve to get scammed for $17.
-
You specifically need a coupon for that, or to go at s specific time, and to a specific place. Everywhere else I’ve been is selling expensive burgers and you might not even get fries if it’s not a fast-food place.
-
-
American here, but this photo feels like a legit parody of American eating habits. If I were gonna make fun of us I would use this exact image LOL.
-
Also the Chicken Guy (Guy Fieri's restaurant chain) in the mall near me shut down a few weeks ago. That was the most unhealthy food I've ever eaten. Good riddance. Also so arrogant to be right next to Chick-fil-A.
-
But I want to know how Bitcoin could be doing so well, it makes no sense, what demand is there for a finite commodity to store their value?
102 comments