Meat prices are through the roof right now and it seems like everyone is feeling the pinch. I no longer bother checking the prices on steak at my local grocery store (Vons-affiliated, Los Angeles) because I know it will be something insane, but for the purpose of this article I just took a peek: One USDA Prime Boneless Ribeye Steak is $55.49 for 1.5 lbs of meat. Hard pass. Sadly, steak is not the only item becoming completely unaffordable. Here are seven grocery store meat prices that are skyrocketing right now.
Ribeye Steak
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Steak prices, especially for popular cuts such as ribeye, are pretty much crazy right now—the Wall Street Journal interviewed a shopper who noticed the average price had jumped to $32.99 a pound, which sounds about right from what I see in the grocery store. “At our local grocery in Ocala Florida, they had them on sale. $17.99lb, normally $26.99lb. Smh, we got top sirloin instead,” one shopper complained nine months ago (it’s only become worse since then).
Farmed Salmon
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Both farmed and fresh salmon is more expensive due to reduced supply vs consistently high demand. The Directorate of Fisheries in Norway, a major supplier of farmed salmon, reported biomass down 2.4% and fish counts down 6.7% compared to 2024. “The report showed fewer fish in the water and that confirmed the view that prices have got to go up”, said Bertrand Oesterle, StoneX VP of Clearing and Execution Sales.
Chicken Breast
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You’re not imagining it—chicken breast, which was never cheap, is more expensive than ever. “Poultry prices decreased by 0.4 percent from July 2025 to August 2025 but were still 1.7 percent higher in August 2025 than in August 2024. Poultry prices are predicted to increase 1.9 percent in 2025, with a prediction interval of 0.9 to 3.0 percent,” says the USDA Economic Research Service.
Ground Beef
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Ground beef, once the more reasonably-priced grocery store meat option, is now becoming unaffordable. This staple item is up 51% since February 2020. “We’ve kind of hit this perfect storm,” Brady Blackett, a third-generation Angus cattle producer in Utah, tells NPR. “There’s healthy competition for the cattle, and there’s not enough of them to fulfill the demand. And so it has driven prices to historic highs.”
Chicken Thighs
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Chicken thighs used to be the cheaper option compared to cuts like chicken breast, but not anymore. “Everything is costing more as we unfortunately have lived through in the past few years,” expert Sarah Zhang told NPR. “But if you went back something like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, thighs cost almost half as much as a chicken breast. And now they either cost the same or close to the same or just, you know, a little bit more. So it’s the comparative of the chicken breast and the chicken thighs has really changed.”
Bacon
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While egg prices are stabilizing, bacon prices are going up. “It’s just the cost of doing business,” Jim Eadie, the founder and publisher of the pork industry publication Swineweb.com, told NBC News. “With tariffs, wages going up, product supply and demand, the cost to produce a pig … everything combines into that inflation for bacon.”
Thanksgiving Turkey
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You might notice your Thanksgiving turkey is more expensive this year compared to the last‚in some places by more than 40%. “Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) has had a major impact on the turkey industry, affecting about 18.7 million turkeys and accounting for 10% of all birds affected by the virus since 2022. This includes 2.2 million turkeys affected so far in 2025,” said American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) economist Bernt Nelson.
