Subject: Re: McDonald’s and Starbucks' U.S. sales are down
This morning, my wife had a doctor's appointment so, in case of a blood test, we didn't eat breakfast before leaving. We ate at a diner near the doctor's office (nothing special, a couple of omelets and two cups of coffee) which, after tax and tip, set us back 60 bucks. Frankly, maybe my "recent" memory of prices is a couple of decades old, but that provided quite a bit of sticker shock.

Yep. While we've had maybe 25% inflation (CPI) since COVID started, restaurant prices have jumped by over 100% in many cases, especially fast casual types. But even the mid-almost-high-end places where entrees used to be $30-50, you commonly see entrees at $50-100+ nowadays.

We just topped up our stock of coffee. My "go to" (when I'm not splurging on Illy) is Costco Kirkland Columbian Supreme in 3 pound cans. The price has increased by 4 bucks over the past three weeks. About a year ago it was three bucks and change a pound and now it's over $7 a pound.

Ironically, coffee prices seem to be quite stable over the years. I have a tool (keepa) in my browser that shows Amazon price history over the long term, and most of my favorite coffees don't show much of a price increase at all. For example, this one - https://www.amazon.com/Lavazza...
shows a range roughly around $15 since 2016. Sometimes on sale for $10 or so, but usually around 15 for all those years. And these Illy K-cups (for those who don't brew the old fashioned way) - https://www.amazon.com/Balance... have a very stable price since 2017, around $9-10, again sometimes on sale. I don't know how to post screenshots here, otherwise I could show the keepa graph that is generated by the tool.

Some of us have seen this movie before, but some are just too young.

This is a FACT! Very few people have any clue what real inflation is like. They complain about 6% and 7% mortgage rates, and don't realize that 8-10+% was normal for many, many years when we were growing up. Heck, our first mortgage at 8.5% was a veritable bargain at the time! Sure, we just had 2-3 years of slightly higher inflation, but it was after a few decades of very low inflation, and it stopped rather quickly. If we see REAL inflation again, I suspect many youngsters will have a very hard time dealing with it.