Updated Quarterly | April 3, 2026
+4.81%
$14.17
The cost of lunch in the workplace impacts millions of American workers every day. It fluctuates, especially over the last few years. The FPI is a simple, realistic barometer for understanding where the economy actually stands.
Every day, Fooda's restaurant partners sell lunch to hundreds of thousands of people at work across the country. Prices are set by the restaurants themselves, making the FPI a direct reflection of real market conditions and not corporate mandates or employer subsidies.
The Fooda Price Index (FPI) tracks the real price of lunch in the workplace, based on millions of transactions across Fooda's national network. It reflects the actual price paid by consumers at checkout, captured directly through Fooda's mobile point-of-sale system and inclusive of all payment types, discounts, and promotions.
The index is calculated monthly by dividing total gross food sales by total meals sold, normalized to business days, since Fooda operates exclusively on business days. This produces a weighted average meal price for each month that accounts for the natural mix of cuisines, concepts, price points, and locations across the network without adjustment or weighting.
Year-over-year price change is calculated two ways. The headline figure compares the current month's weighted average price to the same calendar month in the prior year. Annual and quarterly trend figures compare the average of weighted monthly averages within each period to the same period in the prior year. Current year figures reflect a year-to-date average and are updated quarterly.
The index includes only popup restaurant transactions, which represent unsubsidized meal purchases and reflect the actual price employees choose to pay for lunch. Employer-subsidized formats are excluded because subsidy levels influence purchasing behavior and would distort the index as a measure of true market price.
