That tension, between the rational consumer that economists imagine and the one who still wants a burger at a backyard cookout, is the defining story of the 2026 grilling season. Driven by persistent food inflation, a booming GLP-1 drug culture, and a beverage industry that has quietly staged one of the great product pivots in recent memory, the American summer barbecue is changing. Just not as fast as anyone expected.

The beef problem

Start with the bad news for your wallet: Beef prices are up 14% from a year ago, pushing the average retail price to roughly $10 per pound. A screwworm outbreak in Texas has added pressure to an already tight domestic supply, and there’s no meaningful relief on the horizon before fall.

“We’re going to get to October and we’re going to see a real flattening out of that year-over-year price number,” said Dr. Michael Swanson, a food economist at Wells Fargo who co-authored the bank’s summer barbecue spending report. “Doesn’t mean we’re going to get cheaper beef. It’s just going to be the new normal.”

The strange thing is how little that has changed behavior. Volume is down slightly year-over-year, but the drop is modest—a nibble at the margins, not a retreat. Food manufacturers and restaurant operators are scouring global markets for the cuts Americans demand, because the demand, stubbornly, is still there. “People just have an absolute desire to have it in the rotation,” Swanson said. “Maybe not as often. But it certainly has to be in the rotation.”

The proteins that are winning

If beef is holding the center, everything around it is shifting fast.

Chicken is up just 3% and posting small volume gains as consumers reach for it as a cost-friendly substitute. Pork—ribs, shoulder, carnitas-ready cuts—is an even deeper value for hosts trying to feed a crowd without flinching at the register, though it hasn’t broken through culturally the way chicken has.

And then there are eggs. Last year’s villain—the symbol of avian flu-driven food inflation—has become this summer’s unlikely hero. Egg prices have now fallen below their pre-avian flu levels, making them, per pound of protein, one of the best deals in any American supermarket.

“The high flyer of last year, eggs, has become the big crasher of this year,” Swanson said, expressing amazement that “it’s actually cheaper today for a dozen eggs than it was pre-run-up with the flock issues we had last year.” At the backyard cookout, that translates into one thing: deviled eggs are back, and this time they have a health narrative to go with them.

That narrative runs through GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound, which have moved from prescription pads to cultural shorthand for a broader shift in how Americans think about eating. The operative concept in the food industry right now, Swanson said, is “signal density”—the idea that GLP-1 users, eating less overall, are intensely focused on nutritional return per bite. Protein, fiber, healthy fats.

“Protein is featured on the label everywhere you walk in the supermarket right now,” Swanson said. “Coming up fast behind it would be fiber and other nutrients, where people are like, ‘I better make sure it’s a complete nutritional package that I’m eating right now.'”

Deviled eggs, almost accidentally, check every box.

What’s leaving the cooler

The most clarifying data point in this year’s BBQ report isn’t about meat. It’s about alcohol.

Beer and wine volumes are both down year-over-year—despite prices that are nearly flat, up just 1%. Americans’ increasing aversion to alcohol—especially among Gen Z—is well known by now, but Swanson pointed to another category as a revealing indicator.

Sparkling water prices are up 4.6%, and volume is still rising. That combination—price-inelastic demand, accelerating adoption—is the kind of market signal that gets attention. Swanson offered a structural explanation that is almost too clean: “you can just drink four or five cans of sparkling water and you’re not adding any calories to yourself and you’re not getting drunk,” he said, “they literally have no upper limit to what people could drink during the day, which is a good category. Most other foods, if you’re bringing calories, you’re going to have a limit.”

Remarking on his own seltzer consumption, Swanson added that he was struck by how many variations he saw the last time he visited a certain mass retailer, headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. For his part, “whatever’s the cheapest promotion at Costco this month, that’s in my refrigerator,” but others seem to be remarkably loyal to their favorite essence-filled, bubbly water. “Other people have brands they will not swap out of.”

The GLP-1 connection is again present, but it isn’t the only driver. Non-alcoholic beer has also surged as its own subcategory, and a broader cultural sobriety movement—particularly among younger consumers—was already underway before Ozempic became a household word.

Swanson suggested that red meat has remained popular because of another miracle drug. “Statins are out there and that helps take care of some of the cholesterol concerns around red meat,” he said, noting that statins are the most prescribed medicine in the United States right now. Ten or 15 years in the future, he added, GLP-1s could come for the throne: “there’s going to be more of them and they’re going to be in pill format and they’re going to become like the statins.”

The produce aisle’s casualties

Not everything is finding a soft landing amid this summer’s price increases.

Cauliflower prices are up 9.2%, and volume has seen a sharp decline. Celery is similarly challenged, with prices up 8.3% and sales falling. Both are discretionary—easy to drop from a shopping cart when budgets tighten. Carrots, up 3.6%, are holding a little better, with only a slight volume decrease.

Tomatoes tell a more complicated story. Prices are up 4.4%—the result of a January freeze in Florida and a new tariff structure that replaced a prior suspension agreement with Mexico, nudging fruits and vegetables as a category roughly 6–7% higher year-over-year. Yet tomato volumes are only slightly down, a sign of how deeply embedded they are in the American BBQ ritual. You can negotiate a consumer out of cauliflower. Getting them off a tomato slice on a burger is harder.

Fresh fruit is struggling despite flat prices. Whole watermelon volumes are down even though prices have barely moved. Strawberries present the sharpest anomaly: prices are actually lower than last year, and volumes are still declining—a puzzle that may reflect supply quality issues or simply the limits of what discounting can do when consumers have already reshaped their lists.

The labor market is still the best predictor

For all the complexity in the data, Swanson landed on a simple macro read: watch the labor market.

“We look at the payroll reports and that’s the single best indicator that people are going to be out there having a celebration,” he said. “If they have a job, people are like, ‘I have to celebrate.'” With the labor market holding, he expects a solid grilling season overall—just one where the cooler looks a little different than it did five years ago.

“We’ve thought about that,” he said when asked if the summer barbecue was undergoing a change. Allowing for regional and generational differences, he said, “if you really want to save some money, you can buy ribs or pork shoulder for carnitas or something at an amazing price if it fits into your group’s category. Beef might not be on the menu as often when people are saying, I just want to feed 10 people and I don’t want to spend, you know, $10 a pound.”

Maybe a little less Bud Light. Definitely more LaCroix. A suspicious number of deviled eggs. And somewhere on the grill, inevitably, a burger nobody could quite talk themselves out of.

[This report has been updated to correct Michael Swanson’s first name.]