Economists track a basket of roughly 80,000 items to measure inflation. This site tracks one of them, in detail: the burrito. It is, on its face, a silly choice. It is also a genuinely good one.
A burrito sits at the intersection of nearly every input that makes American lunch expensive — the tortilla (wheat, corn), the protein (beef, chicken, pork), the avocado (Michoacán), the labor (a person, in front of you, by hand), the rent (a storefront, often urban), and increasingly the platform fee (DoorDash or Uber, 18–30%). When the burrito gets more expensive, it is rarely about the burrito.
Since 2006, when Chipotle went public selling a chicken burrito for $5.30, that same item has risen to $10.95 — a 107% increase. The Consumer Price Index over the same window: 61%. The gap is wide enough to matter and stable enough to study.
We call it burritonomics. It is, more usefully, a tractable lens on Baumol's cost disease, minimum wage policy, the geography of supply chains, and the slow upmarket migration of fast food. Every named restaurant in our dataset links to a verifiable public source. Every chart cites a BLS series. The methodology section at the bottom of the page shows our work.
We will publish a refreshed index monthly. If you spot a verifiable burrito price we should add — chain or independent, anywhere in the country — submit it on the right. Include the restaurant's website. We'll do the rest.
— The Editors, est. May 2026