Grocery prices in Canada have gone, well, bananas. Canadians paid 9.7% more for groceries in April and May than they did a year earlier.
Understandably, they are worried. According to Statistics Canada, over 40% of Canadians said the rising cost of food affected them more than any other major daily expense—including housing, clothing and transportation.
“I think a lot of people are having a hard time making the adjustment because it was so rapid,” says Jessica Moorhouse, an Accredited Financial Counsellor and host of the More Money Podcast. “It wasn’t as gradual as it has normally been.”
But perhaps the most unusual consequence of the surge is that grocery price inflation is overtaking restaurant price inflation, which clocks in at 6.8%. The numbers are even more impressive for fresh or frozen food prices, up 11.7% year-over-year in May. Fresh vegetables went up 10.3%, and edible fats and oils soared a whopping 30%—the largest hike on record, according to Statistics Canada.
Does that mean it’s now cheaper to eat meals at restaurants than it is to buy groceries and cook, overturning a long-held assumption of personal finance?
To experience what food inflation looks like on the ground, Forbes Advisor decided to test whether it is actually cheaper for a single person to buy groceries, buy a ‘ready to eat’ counter meal, buy a meal kit, order out or order delivery. We did that by buying the same dish each of those different ways.
For context: the average Canadian man (aged 19 to 30) spent $71.37 on food every week in 2021, compared to $62.14 for the average woman of the same age.
The dish in question? A pulled pork burrito with a can of classic co*ke.
Here’s what we found.
Restaurants Are Back
First, the good news: as of July, nearly all pandemic-related health restrictions for the service industry are over. Granted, that’s not helping food-price inflation. The causes of the soaring prices—lingering supply chain issues from the COVID-19 pandemic, excessive speculation in world food markets and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine—are all still there. But the restaurant industry is coming out of its pandemic crisis.
“People are going out. Restaurants are back in operation,” says Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “So there’s more [restaurant] supply out there.”
With more restaurants vying for your business, consumers could benefit from competition driving down prices too.
Ordering Out
We chose to get our pulled pork burrito from Burrito Boyz, a popular eatery that sells Mexican-style street food at several locations in Ontario.
A large pulled pork burrito loaded with Mexican rice, black beans, green peppers, onions, salsa, shredded cheese and coleslaw in a whole wheat tortilla came to $12.19. A can of Coca-Cola ($1.73) and Ontario’s Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) which is 13%, brought the grand total to $15.73.
Ordering that same meal once a day, every day for a week adds up to a total of $110.11.
Ordering the same thing through UberEats is even more expensive. The exact same meal, ordered on a Sunday evening, came to $17.72 along with a $4.99 delivery fee, a $5.21 charge for taxes “and other fees”, and $4.18 for a 15% tip (the lowest tipping option on the app).
In total, an app order comes to $32.10—more than double what it costs to buy in-store—with an estimated delivery time of around 30 to 40 minutes. Multiplying that by seven would give a weekly total of $224.70.
Homemade Burritos
A Metro grocery store in downtown Toronto provided everything we needed to recreate that large pulled pork burrito from scratch, along with a single can of Coca-Cola.
The total for this meal’s ingredients came to $42.62, including HST. However, the cost per meal is a fair bit lower at $8.92.
Here is a breakdown of every ingredient, along with the amount needed to fill up a homemade burrito:
¼ green pepper: = $0.35 (whole cost: $1.38)
½ red onion = $1.57 (whole cost: $3.13)
1/3 cup of shredded cheese = $1.50 (whole cost: 8.99)
½ cup of broccoli coleslaw: $0.37 (whole cost $8.99)
1 tortilla (out of a 12-pack) = $0.40 (whole cost: $4.89)
1 serving of mild salsa = $0.57 (whole cost: $3.99)
¼ package of pulled pork = $2.24 (whole cost: $8.99)
1/8 can of beans = $1 (whole cost: $0.50)
1 serving of long grain rice = $0.17 (whole cost: $3.44)
1 can of Coca-Cola = $1
Because all of the ingredients are bought separately, and don’t run out all at once, calculating the weekly spend on homemade burritos is a little tricky. When all costs are factored in, the total comes to $71.13. That’s about the same as the weekly average a Canadian man spends on food.
The ‘Grocerant’
Some grocery stores, like Loblaws, bridge the divide betweenrestaurant meals and home cooking. Charlebois calls these places ‘grocerants’. Many stores have a variation of a grocerant—either a simple section with prepared food to take home, or a full sit-down eating area and wide selection of meals, like at Farm Boy and Whole Foods.
At a Loblaws supermarket in Toronto, a party tray of pulled pork tacos sat alongside an assortment of other meals, like butter salmon filets and rigatoni marinara with meatballs. While a pulled pork taco isn’t exactly the same as a pulled pork burrito, it’s certainly close enough for this comparison. The tray held enough pulled pork, coleslaw, cheese, and sauces to fill roughly two Burrito Boyz burritos at a cost of $18, including tax. Alongside a six-pack of regular Coca-Cola (Loblaws doesn’t sell single cans), the total price came to $21.71.
Each meal would only come to $9.98 per person, but buying enough to serve exactly seven meals in a week gets tricky. You’d need four countertop party trays (eight meals total), plus two Coca-cola six-packs (because Loblaws didn’t sell single regular Coca-Cola cans). This weekly total comes to $111.90.
Ordering a (Non-Burrito) Meal Kit
Finding a burrito-only meal kit proved to be impossible, but we were able to sign up for HelloFresh, a popular meal kit service in Canada. We specifically chose a meat-heavy six-serving subscription package to try and mimic the price of a pulled pork burrito as closely as possible.
Incidentally, HelloFresh provided two servings each of pork and pepper tacos with lime crema and salsa fresca (very similar to the meal from Loblaws). The package also included Italian-inspired beef burgers with caramelized onions and parmesan potato wedges, and chicken schnitzel with garlic potatoes and spring salad.
The regular box price for six meals would have been $73, plus a $9.99 shipping cost, for a grand total of $82.99. However, the service was running a significant $40 discount at the time we ordered, which meant the week’s order came in at just $32.99.
Since the most that could be purchased from HelloFresh in one order is six servings, you would need to order two to enjoy seven meals a week. Therefore, the total price of two HelloFresh meal kits, plus seven $1 co*ke cans from Metro, would come out to $72.98.
Without the discount, the price is, of course, steeper. Two regular -price HelloFresh kits, plus the co*ke, comes to $172.98.
The Verdict
Food-price inflation may be bad, but it’s not bad enough to have overturned a classic principle of personal finance: To save money, eat at home instead of restaurants, however cheap the latter may be.
While we know food costs vary across regions and retailers, our burrito test clearly shows that the savings from eating at home are still significant. Making your meal at home would cost $71.13 for a week, while the cheapest way to get it at a restaurant would still cost $110.11 a week. And delivery would be far more costly than that.
Here are all options ranked from cheapest to most expensive for a 7-day stretch of meals at one burrito meal per day.
Ultimately, it is still cheaper to make anything from scratch than it is to go out and buy it from a restaurant, but sticker price isn’t the only reason. “Typically, when you make a similar thing at home, you get more meals out of it,” says Moorhouse.
That said, by prepping food yourself, you are paying with your time. Plus, some people can stretch a particularly hefty takeout order.
“Maybe they would order a whole chicken, but would get maybe a salad and split it over two or three days,” says Jennifer Ferguson, a Nova Scotia-based registered dietician.
Disheartening as it may be to contemplate today’s food prices, Charlebois says they could even get worse. June’s food price inflation statistics, expected to come out in late July, could hit as high as 10%, he says. But following that, there could be better things to come for Canadian grocery shoppers.
“[July’s figures are] probably going to be the worst,” Charlebois says, “but we are expecting the food inflation to start dropping after that.”
