Beef CPI inflation: 11.8% in June 2026, 3.5% in September

The headlines say beef inflation is cooling, and they're right. If you buy ribeye, your distributor's invoice says something different, and it's also right. The two numbers measure different things, and pricing a menu off the wrong one puts the increase on the wrong plates.

What follows is what the beef data say as of November 12, 2026, what the chains actually did with their menus, and the plate math for repricing a beef dish without overshooting.

Beef inflation slowed, but prices stayed high

The consumer price index for beef and veal was up 11.8% year over year in June 2026. By September it was up 3.5%. December 2025 had been 16.4% above December 2024.

Slower inflation still leaves prices high. It means this fall's prices are now being compared with last fall's, which were already high. The Bureau of Labor Statistics average price for 100% ground beef hit $6.923 a pound in August 2026, the highest in the series. It was $6.792 in September, 7.4% above September 2025's $6.323, and $6.755 in October.

USDA's Economic Research Service still forecasts beef and veal prices up 8.7% for 2026, with a range of 7.4% to 10.1%, in its October 23 outlook. That's an annual average, and it carries the double-digit first half with it.

You won't find an official October year-over-year number. The October CPI came out November 10, and BLS published no 12-month changes for most indexes because it didn't collect October 2025 prices during last year's funding lapse. What it did publish is the monthly move: "the beef index rose 0.9 percent" from September, seasonally adjusted. A site quoting an October year-over-year beef figure is quoting an estimate, not BLS.

Your invoice follows cuts, not the CPI

The CPI measures what shoppers pay at the grocery store. You buy at wholesale, by cut, and the cuts aren't moving together.

Cattle and wholesale beef as a whole are now below a year earlier. Per ERS, farm-level cattle prices were 7.6% below a year earlier in September and wholesale beef was 3.6% lower, though ERS still forecasts wholesale beef up 8.8% for 2026. In June, the BLS producer price index for beef and veal had been up 12.7%.

Rib and loin went the other way. Boneless heavy ribeye set a record in early October at $1,607.75 per hundredweight, up 15% from a year earlier and 36% from 2024, according to the Hales Cattle Letter, published on Meatingplace October 8, which set it against a weakening ground-beef market. Here is USDA's afternoon boxed beef report (LM_XB403) for November 12, Choice cuts plus 81% ground beef chubs, converted to dollars a pound. The linked report updates daily, so today's numbers will differ. These are FOB plant prices, before your distributor's margin.

Ribeye on that one afternoon's sheet was in the same range as the figure Hales called a record in October, though the two may not be the same series. The overall Choice cutout, at $357.59, sat below its spring high; Southern Ag Today reported it topped $400 in mid-March.

Retail split the other way. In September, BLS uncooked steaks were up 2.7% and boneless sirloin's average price was down 0.2%, while uncooked ground beef was up 5.4%. "Beef is up" is too blunt to price a menu with. A ribeye dish and a burger had different years, and the grocery shelf and the boxed-beef sheet disagree on which had the worse one.

Supply is still short, and the fixes are partial

On January 1, 2026, USDA counted 86.2 million cattle and calves, down from 86.5 million a year before. The White House's August proclamation called it the "lowest level in 75 years." Beef cows were 27.6 million, down 1%, and the 2025 calf crop was 32.9 million, down 2%. ERS says "Beef production is expected to remain below year-ago levels through the end of 2026."

Washington's moves on imports, tariffs and Mexican cattle are all partial:

• More quota, for lean trimmings. A February proclamation added 80,000 metric tons of lean-trimmings quota for Argentina for 2026, on top of its existing 20,000. An August 26 proclamation added 300,000 metric tons for other countries, Brazil included, in three 100,000-ton tranches running from September 1 to November 30. Lean trimmings become ground beef. They don't make more ribeyes.
• Brazil's tariff. The Supreme Court struck down the 2025 IEEPA tariffs, including the one on Brazil, on February 20, and Farm Policy News reported that the 25% Section 301 tariff on Brazil in July exempted beef. Brazilian beef outside the quota still pays the 26.4% over-quota rate.
• Mexican cattle. Imports were halted over New World screwworm. USDA's APHIS is reopening ports one at a time: Douglas, Arizona on August 24; Santa Teresa, New Mexico on September 24; Columbus, New Mexico on October 26. Nogales, Arizona is planned for November 30; USDA's October 20 announcement said that date holds "if conditions continue to support safe trade." New Mexico has confirmed screwworm cases since mid-October, in Grant, Otero and Doña Ana counties, and USDA confirmed screwworm in Arizona on October 28.

Menu prices rose far less than beef

Restaurant menus haven't tracked beef. In 2025 the beef and veal index averaged 11.0% above 2024, while food away from home rose 3.7%. In the year to September 2026, food away from home was up 3.5% (full service 3.8%, limited service 3.2%), the same rate as beef. Datassential's burger price index, reported by Restaurant Dive, found burger menu prices up about 14% from January 2023 to early 2026 while beef production costs rose 32%.

Two public companies with large steakhouse brands:

Texas Roadhouse's November 5 filing put its restaurant margin at 14.6% for the quarter, up 30 basis points, and its food and beverage cost fell to 35.5% of sales from 35.8%. LongHorn's segment margin rose 60 basis points to 18.0%. Neither company's own costs tracked retail beef, and Darden priced roughly in line with its commodity inflation. Both buy at a scale, and on contracts, that an independent usually can't.

Smaller operators split. In New York, Ryan Sutton's The Lo Times documented Atla's ribeye going from $42 in spring 2025 to $65 by April 2026, with the side swapped, and The Grill's New York strip up $13 to $115. In Zebulon, North Carolina, Smash Masters owner Robert Thompson told WRAL in June he was absorbing what he could while weighing a price increase: "We have to find ways to cut something somewhere else, because beef is our main source of business."

The plate math: hold the dollars or restore the percentage

Take a $30 steak dish at 35% food cost, where beef is 70% of the plate cost. Those are assumptions for the example; use your own. Now beef goes up 15%.

There are two ways to reprice it:

• Hold gross-profit dollars: $31.10, up 3.7%. You still clear $19.50 a plate. Your food cost reads 37.3%.
• Restore 35%: $33.15, up 10.5%. You clear $21.55 a plate, $2.05 more than before beef went up.

The second option is a price increase presented as cost recovery. A percentage target rises with cost even when you're making the same money per plate; gross-profit dollars are what pay rent and payroll. That's the contribution-margin argument. Holding dollars does assume your covers hold, which is why you watch the mix afterward.

How hard the hit lands depends on beef's share of the menu price, not of the plate. The formula is beef's share of the price times the beef increase. Here that's 24.5% times 15%, or 3.7 points. The same 15% on a steak at 28% food cost, where beef is 80% of the plate, adds 3.36 points: 28% becomes 31.4%. Run it per item, on actual rather than theoretical food cost, because trim and waste on a $16-a-pound cut cost real money.

Reprice cut by cut

The wholesale split tells you where to look first:

• Ribeye dishes carry the documented increase: boneless ribeye was 15% above a year earlier in early October. Recost these first.
• Tenderloin, strip, chuck, brisket and burgers: check six months of your own invoices before you move them. The retail ground beef record isn't your cost.
• Event menus quoted now for next year lock in a per-pound price you don't have yet. A tenderloin station's cost depends on trim and cooking loss as much as the invoice price; the carving station yield post has the numbers.
• Volume decides priority. Pull item-level sales for your beef dishes. A best-selling steak with a small food-cost gap usually costs you more dollars than a slow seller with a big one.

What I'm not going to give you

Year-over-year wholesale changes for tenderloin, strip, chuck or brisket. I have USDA's November 12 levels, not a year-ago comparison I'd stand behind.

A restaurant that moved beef to market price. I found plenty of advice to do it and no named US restaurant documented doing it in 2026.

Where ribeye goes next. ERS forecasts annual averages by category, not cuts. I also couldn't confirm the all-time Choice cutout high against USDA's own data.

Whether the extra import quota filled. I couldn't find a source.

What to do

1. Price off your invoices, by cut. Pull six months of per-pound costs for ribeye, tenderloin, strip and ground beef from your invoices.
2. Recost every beef dish with beef's share of the price times the increase, and flag the ones whose food cost moved past whatever threshold you already act on.
3. Hold gross-profit dollars on high-volume beef items. Save full percentage recovery for dishes guests won't trade away.
4. Reprice ribeye first. Move tenderloin, strip and grind-based items only when your own invoices show the cost has moved.
5. Put a validity date on beef-heavy event quotes you send now.
6. Watch item mix for four weeks after any change, dish by dish.

Disclosure: I work at Katalyst, which sells a restaurant POS that reports item-level margin and sales velocity. The number this decision turns on comes off your distributor's invoice, and no software knows it until someone enters it.