BBQ Meat Prices: The 2025 Year in Review

The MSC Market Desk · reviewed by John Kirker · Published January 7, 2026 · Data: 2025 USDA AMS reports

The Take

Opinion – the desk’s own read, not advice.

We’ve said it before at this desk and 2025 proved it with numbers: beef is not one market, it’s a dozen little markets wearing the same trench coat. Chuck roast – the cut half our readers reach for specifically because it’s supposed to be the cheap, patient, low-and-slow option – posted the single biggest annual-average gain in the entire digest, up 29.0% YoY and up 57.5% from January to December. That’s not a “trading down” cut anymore in the way it was in 2023. Meanwhile filet mignon, the cut nobody buys for value, still managed a 40.5% open-to-close run. When the “splurge” cut and the “budget” cut both post that kind of movement, the old rule of thumb – buy the cheap cut when beef gets expensive – needs an asterisk.

Our honest read is that 2025 rewarded shoppers who watched the calendar more than the cut. Tri-tip at $7.36 in January was a gift; at $15.07 in June it was a splurge wearing tri-tip’s clothes. The same cut, the same case, a doubled price four months apart. If there’s one lesson from this year’s table, it’s that “what’s on sale” beat “what’s traditionally cheap” every time – and we suspect that’s going to matter even more in 2026 if the pattern holds.

The 2025 scoreboard (grocery features, national annual averages)

Live prices, updated nightly: Meat Prices This Week.

The year in three acts

Early 2025: Cheap Turkey, Cheap Filet, a Cattle Market Already Coiled

The year opened with some of its widest contradictions still on the shelf. Whole turkey started January at $1.37/lb – practically a clearance price – while filet mignon opened at $12.54, its cheapest point of the whole year. Chuck roast opened at $6.33 and tri-tip at $7.36, both near their eventual annual lows, giving early shoppers no hint of what was coming. Beef ribs opened modestly at $4.68 and would more than triple those levels by winter’s end.

By February and into spring, the case still looked calm on the surface – chicken thighs bottomed at $2.15 in February, prime rib dipped to $9.78, and beef short ribs sat at a low $8.52 in June – but tri-tip and prime rib were already staging their first climbs, and cattle-market reporting was warning that a shrunken herd would keep squeezing supply all year.

Mid-2025: The Beef Case Catches Fire

Summer is when the digest turns unmistakable. Tri-tip rocketed to its year high of $15.07 in June – more than double its January price – while filet mignon hit $20.21 in May and prime rib touched $15.49 in July. Chicken breast peaked modestly at $4.72 in July, a reminder that poultry was riding a much gentler wave. Brisket, notably, stayed cheap through spring, bottoming at $6.54 in April before its own second-half surge began.

Late 2025: Ribs, Roasts, and a Turkey Whipsaw

The last third of the year became a parade of new highs across the beef case: ribeye hit $18.79 in October, NY strip $15.50 in September, beef short ribs $10.96 in October, and beef ribs a startling $7.32 in November – up from a $3.62 February low. Chuck roast closed the year at $9.97, its high and its close in the same month, a 57.5% climb from where it opened. Whole turkey, after cratering to $1.30 in February, spiked to $3.99 in August before settling back to $2.04 by December – the single wildest round-trip of the year.

Winners and losers

Nothing in the digest came close to chuck roast’s 2025: a 29.0% year-over-year jump in its annual average ($5.62 to $7.25), and a jaw-dropping 57.5% climb from its $6.33 January open to its $9.97 December close – which also happened to be its December high. That’s a cut that started the year as a budget stand-by and ended it looking like a splurge. Filet mignon told a similar story from a different angle: its annual average only rose 4.7% YoY, but the cut itself ran from a $12.54 January low all the way to a $20.21 May high before settling at $17.62 in December, a 40.5% open-to-close move. Tri-tip’s annual average jumped 34.5% YoY even though its December close ($7.44) barely moved from its January open ($7.36) – all the action happened in between, peaking at $15.07 in June. See our tri-tip guide for cut-specific detail.

On the other side of the ledger, chicken wings were the year’s standout markdown: a 21.8% drop in annual average versus 2024, and a 20.3% slide from January’s $3.65 open to December’s $2.91 close – the cut’s low point for the year. Chicken thighs (-18.1% YoY) and whole turkey (-13.8% YoY) also averaged down for the year, though turkey’s swings within 2025 – from a $1.30 February low to a $3.99 August high – make “down for the year” a misleading label for anyone shopping turkey in real time. Beef ribs, despite a -7.6% YoY average, actually climbed 28.0% from open to close, another case where the year-average number and the shopper’s lived experience diverge.

Pork held the middle of the table all year: pork butt up a modest 10.3% YoY but 26.0% open-to-close, pork loin up just 3.4% YoY, and pork belly essentially flat at -1.2% YoY. See our pork butt guide for buying strategy.

Wholesale: the year underneath

The wholesale boxed beef cutout – a context-only reference series, not a retail number – averaged $3.51/lb-equivalent in 2025, up 17.0% from 2024’s $3.00 average, with a February low of $3.13 and a June high of $3.90. That upward wholesale drift tracked closely with what showed up at the meat case all year: retail beef cuts from tri-tip to ribeye to chuck roast posted some of the digest’s largest annual-average gains, suggesting the cutout’s climb fed fairly directly into shelf prices rather than being absorbed elsewhere in the supply chain.

The forces that shaped 2025

Published reporting through 2025 painted beef as the year’s dominant protein story, with federal inflation data showing meat prices up broadly and beef and veal specifically outpacing other categories, while ground beef and steak prices were both reported running well above year-ago levels.^†1†5 Coverage repeatedly tied that strength to supply: the national cattle herd was described as being at its lowest January inventory level in decades, a drought-driven rebuilding problem that reporting said was only beginning to ease late in the year, with ranchers still “slowly” restocking as of August.^†16

A second theme in the reporting was divergence – beef running hot while pork and chicken stayed comparatively calm, and while turkey experienced its own sharp, separate wholesale spike later in the year that reporting attributed largely to supply dynamics distinct from the broader beef story.^†3†4 Reporting on the poultry side also noted that egg markets, hit hard by avian flu, were a distinct crisis from broiler chicken meat, which several outlets described as comparatively steady across the year.^†4

On the policy side, published reporting pointed to a busy year of federal action aimed at the beef supply chain, including a broader USDA beef-industry plan addressing grazing access and processing capacity, alongside a separate move to expand a low-tariff quota for imported Argentine beef intended to relieve retail pressure – a step reporting said drew criticism from U.S. ranchers.^†4

Dispatches from 2025

The Herd Behind the Headlines

Reporting throughout 2025 traced elevated beef prices back to a genuinely historic supply constraint – the U.S. cattle herd’s smallest January inventory in decades – and described ranchers only beginning a slow rebuilding process well into the year.^†16 That supply story, more than any single retail event, was cited repeatedly as the reason beef kept setting new highs while other proteins stayed comparatively steady.

Turkey’s Quiet Wholesale Spike

While beef dominated headlines, trade reporting flagged a separate and sharper story in turkey markets, describing a wholesale price surge running well ahead of broiler chicken over the same stretch.^†3 The digest’s own whole-turkey numbers – a February low giving way to an August high before a year-end retreat – track with that account of a volatile, supply-driven turkey market distinct from beef’s steadier climb.

Shoppers Trade Down, Retailers Follow

Coverage of shopper behavior in 2025 described households shifting toward smaller purchases, more coupon use, and substitutions away from beef toward cheaper proteins, with retailers responding by emphasizing value-pack ground beef and off-cuts on their shelves.^†1 That reported shift lines up with a year in which the digest’s own “budget” beef cuts, like chuck roast, still posted the sharpest price increases of any cut tracked.

The 2026 playbook

For the family cook, 2025’s digest points to timing over habit. Tri-tip’s cheapest month was January ($7.36) and its most expensive was June ($15.07) – a pattern worth watching again this year rather than assuming any single cut is reliably a “budget” buy. Chuck roast, historically the go-to for stretching a grocery budget, opened 2025 at $6.33 and closed at $9.97; a shopper who stocked the freezer early in the year against that cut’s eventual climb would have banked real savings. Prime rib followed a similar arc, from a $9.78 February low to a $15.49 July high before easing back somewhat by year-end – holiday roast shoppers who buy outside the traditional holiday window may find better numbers.

For the caterer or high-volume buyer, the chicken and pork side of the digest offered far more stability than beef all year. Chicken wings actually got cheaper as 2025 went on (down 20.3% January to December), and chicken breast’s full-year range was a comparatively tame $3.85 to $4.72. Pork butt, despite its 26.0% open-to-close climb, still averaged just $2.99/lb for the year – worth checking our pork butt guide for smoking strategy at that price point. The playbook for 2026: build menus around whichever protein the digest shows holding steady, and treat beef cuts as calendar plays rather than fixed-price staples.

Watching 2026

Heading into 2026, we’re watching whether the tight cattle-supply conditions that pushed beef higher through 2025 begin to ease, and whether the same volatility that whipsawed whole turkey and beef ribs late in the year carries into the next cycle. We’ll also be watching whether the gap between beef and the poultry/pork case – which stayed comparatively calm all year in the digest – continues to widen or starts to close as shoppers adjust their baskets.

Sources

1. www.grocerydive.com/news/grocery-inflation-meat-prices-september-2025-food-cpi/803872/
2. www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5534424/beef-prices-record-high-cost
3. hpj.com/2025/11/21/holiday-cheer-tempered-by-rising-protein-prices/
4. www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/29565-year-in-review-meat-and-poultry
5. www.axios.com/2025/07/19/beef-prices-2025-cpi-inflation
6. www.theguardian.com/food/2025/sep/27/beef-and-cattle-prices-record-highs
7. www.allagnews.com/protein-prices-diverge-as-beef-breaks-from-pack/
8. www.rfdtv.com/protein-prices-are-climbing-higher-across-the-board-for-the-month-of-june
9. thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/5661369-these-groceries-had-the-biggest-price-spikes-in-2025/
10. www.retailbrew.com/stories/2025/12/22/protein-hype-food-prices-soar-in-2025
11. fortune.com/2025/11/15/beef-prices-outlook-inflation-cattle-herd-supply-demand-trump-tariffs/
12. www.provisioneronline.com/articles/118355-january-brings-a-sizzling-start-to-the-year-for-the-meat-department
13. www.foodandwine.com/meat-poultry-prices-smartasset-report-11736183
14. ritterfoods.com/meat-price-forecast-q4-2025-beef-pork-poultry/
15. www.linkedin.com/posts/yakhin_groceryindustry-foodprices-foodinflation-activity-7387016907352293377-33nc
16. www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-cattle-ranchers-slowly-start-rebuild-decimated-herd-2025-08-07/