BBQ Meat Price Report – January 2026

The MSC Market Desk · reviewed by John Kirker · Published February 2, 2026 · Data: January 2026 USDA AMS reports

The Take

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

Our read: this is the month to buy your beef in the freezer aisle of the calendar, not the steakhouse aisle. Filet mignon at $19.02 and climbing on a herd that’s the smallest since 1951 isn’t a dip you wait out – it’s a structural story, and reporting suggests it keeps pressuring premium cuts well past this winter. If you’ve been saving a filet purchase for a “better month,” we don’t think that month is coming soon.

Where we’d actually spend: chuck roast, now $8.00 after finally rolling over from its range-topping December perch, and pork loin at $2.31, a fresh low for its own window. Both are doing exactly what a smart braise-and-roast budget wants them to do this time of year. We’d stock the freezer with chuck for stews and pulled roasts now, and treat any beef steak purchase this month as a splurge, not a staple.

The scoreboard (January 2026 grocery features, national averages)

Full live table for every cut: Meat Prices This Week.

The movers

Filet mignon is the headline again: $19.02 a pound, up 7.9% on the month and a startling 51.7% versus a year ago. That’s still shy of December’s $20.41 window high, but it’s a long way from the $12.54 this cut fetched back in January 2025. Regionally the spread is enormous – the Southwest still finds it for $12.07 while the Northeast is paying $23.14, nearly double. If you’re shopping filet this month, region matters more than timing.

Chuck roast finally cracked. After sitting at the top of its 14-month range in December at $9.97, it dropped 19.8% to $8.00 – the correction we flagged as a possibility last issue, and it arrived. It’s still up 26.4% year-over-year, so “cheaper” is relative, but the wholesale pullback we were watching evidently made it to the retail case. Tri-tip moved the opposite direction, up a sharp 24.3% to $9.25, though it remains well off its $15.07 June high.

Chicken wings jumped 36.8% to $3.98, a new window high for this series, right after bottoming at $2.91 in December – a reminder that wings can swing hard around game-day demand. Chicken breast climbed 11.6% to $4.44, and whole chicken rose 7.8% to $2.48, both consistent with reporting on poultry taking a bigger role in retail ad circulars as the budget-beef alternative.

On the downside, whole turkey cratered 32.4% to $1.38 – classic post-holiday unwind, and pork loin fell 31.3% to $2.31, a new low for its own recent range. Prime rib dropped 23.4% to $10.83 and beef ribs fell 18% to $4.91, both giving back some of their post-roast-season premium. For steak lovers, ribeye eased 8.9% to $14.37 and NY strip slid 10.4% to $13.61 – a bit of relief even as filet keeps climbing.

Where the deals are

The Southwest is quietly the best place in the country to be shopping the meat case this month: cheapest on filet mignon ($12.07), tri-tip ($8.37), ribeye ($11.55), and beef ribs ($4.49). The Southeast holds down chuck roast ($6.44), pork loin ($1.98), chicken wings among the low end, and turkey breast ($3.99). On the other end, the Northeast keeps paying the most for both filet mignon ($23.14) and brisket ($9.99), while Hawaii’s usual freight premium shows up across pork tenderloin, chicken thighs, and pork belly.

Wholesale watch

The boxed beef cutout – our wholesale reference series – ticked up 2% on the month to $3.60 per pound equivalent, and sits 11.8% above a year ago. It’s a stale, out-of-season read for context rather than a live scoreboard number, but the direction fits: wholesale beef costs still trending up even as some individual retail cuts like chuck and prime rib pulled back this month. Don’t read too much retail relief into January’s beef declines – the cutout says the underlying cost pressure hasn’t broken.

The forces under the market

The throughline for January is the same one running under most of 2026’s beef story: a historically small U.S. cattle herd. Reporting tied that scarcity directly to the pressure on premium cuts like filet mignon, framing it as a broad wholesale-cost squeeze rather than anything specific to one steak.^†7 USDA’s monthly Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook for January was built around the same theme – supply balance, not demand shock, as the central driver of beef’s climb.^†6

Pork told a calmer story this month, with reporting describing adequate hog supplies and easing post-holiday demand keeping prices range-bound, even as export demand for boneless butts offered some support underneath.^†1 On the poultry side, young chicken harvest was reported up 7% year over year, which lines up with wings and breasts moving in different directions this month, while turkey stayed constrained by flocks still rebuilding from bird flu.^†9 Policy-wise, USDA reopened the border to Mexican cattle imports in an attempt to ease domestic feeder-cattle flow into Texas and Kansas feedlots, while Brazil’s beef exporters reportedly blew through their entire 52,000-tonne duty-free U.S. quota in the first six days of January – a sign of just how tight the domestic market has become.^†11

Dispatches

The herd that shrank to 1951 levels

A USDA inventory release on January 30 pegged the U.S. cattle herd at 86.2 million head – the lowest since 1951 – with the beef-cow count at 27.6 million head, the lowest since 1961.^†2 That single data point is doing a lot of work behind this month’s filet mignon and steak pricing, and reporting suggests the squeeze is expected to keep pressuring beef inflation well beyond this winter.^†7

A slaughterhouse stays open on borrowed time

Tyson Foods said it would keep processing beef at its Lexington, Nebraska plant even though the facility was slated to close around January 20, with the company citing limited cattle availability, Reuters reported.^†13 It’s a small, telling sign of how thin cattle supply has gotten – a major beef plant runs on borrowed cattle rather than shutting down on schedule.

Shoppers trade down at the meat case

Market commentary this month described shoppers reaching for ground meat instead of ribeye, while retailers leaned harder into chuck features and pushed poultry as the affordable option.^†13 A New Year grocery story even flagged public backlash against a Florida grocer over what shoppers called “criminal” meat prices – a small but pointed sign of how raw the sticker shock feels right now.^†13

Last month’s call

Grading our December call: we said turkey and tri-tip’s steep drops were normal seasonal unwind, not a new trend, and turkey delivered exactly that, sliding another 32.4% to $1.38, closing in on this window’s $1.30 February low as expected. Tri-tip surprised us, though – instead of continuing down, it jumped 24.3% to $9.25, a reminder that tri-tip’s swings don’t always follow the seasonal script. On chuck roast, we called it right: we said we’d be watching whether December’s wholesale pullback turned into a real retail correction, and it did, with chuck falling 19.8% to $8.00 off its range-topping December perch.

The playbook

For the family cook: lean into the cuts that just got cheaper. Chuck roast at $8.00, pork loin at $2.31, and pork tenderloin down 6.8% to $4.92 are all doing braises, roasts, and sheet-pan dinners well below where they sat a month or two ago. Whole turkey at $1.38 is also a legitimate buy right now if your freezer has room – this is close to the seasonal bottom this window has shown before.

For the caterer or backyard competitor: if a menu calls for filet mignon or tri-tip this month, shop the Southwest region’s pricing if you have any sourcing flexibility, since the spread between regions on filet ($12.07 vs. $23.14) is wide enough to matter on a catering order. Otherwise, this is a strong month to lean the menu toward ribeye or NY strip, both of which eased 8-10% off their fall highs, rather than filet, which just keeps setting records.

Watching next month

Turkey’s plunge to $1.38 looks like it’s chasing this window’s $1.30 February low, so expect it to bottom out over the next month before any spring rebound – not a surprise, just the seasonal cycle finishing its move. Chicken wings at a window-high $3.98 are worth watching for a pullback of their own, since December’s $2.91 low shows how fast this cut can swing in either direction. And with chuck roast now down off its range top, the real test is whether $8.00 holds or whether the wholesale cutout’s 2% monthly rise this month starts pulling chuck back upward again.

Sources

1. alfred.stlouisfed.org/release
2. fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/
3. insights.tridge.com/product-country-monthly-update-market-insights/fresh-beef/US/2026-01
4. www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2026/consumer-price-index-2025-in-review.htm
5. mrprimebeef.com/store/new-years-2026/steak
6. pricehistory.app/p/omaha-steaks-4-5oz-butchers-cut-filet-Fytapvce
7. www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2026/01/28/beef-in-us-is-pricier-than-ever
8. diningalliance.com/blog/the-dish-market-report-january-27-2026/
9. diningalliance.com/blog/the-dish-market-report-january-20-2026/
10. alfred.stlouisfed.org/release
11. www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/01/14/dairy-bakery-goods-and-produce-climb-but-cheaper-eggs-offer-a-rare-break/
12. diningalliance.com/blog/the-dish-market-report-january-13-2026/
13. www.summitplate.com/blog/grocery-price-index-january-2026
14. wolfstreet.com/2026/01/15/food-inflation-gets-hot-but-not-every-item-a-look-at-beef-chicken-coffee-eggs-dairy-fresh-fruit-vegetables-other-foods/