This Is What A Steak Dinner Cost Back In The 1960s

Looking at a restaurant menu today, diners might ask, were prices always this high? The short answer is yes — although food prices often rise faster than the general rate of inflation, steak prices today are similar to the 1960s when adjusted for inflation. Dialing the clock back to the 1960s shows steak dinners cost as little as $3 to $4, and even filet mignon, one of the most expensive steak cuts today — would still have a single-digit price tag. (The real reason steak is so expensive? Supply.)

At a Saugus, Massachusetts, Hilltop Steakhouse in 1967, diners could choose from steak selections priced under $5, according to a menu shared to the Lynn Eats Facebook group. Sirloin steak was $3.25 with salad, potato, and rolls with butter, though the menu doesn't specify the steak's size. Filet mignon was $4.25 and tenderloin cost $3.25. Down in St. Louis, Missouri, a nine-ounce tenderloin steak at The Pick-Mark Twain Hotel was $4 in 1960 and 16 ounces of sirloin was $4.25 — including potatoes, salad, hot rolls with butter, and a beverage, via a menu posted to Reddit.

Promotions sometimes brought steak prices even lower. In 1961, a California steakhouse advertised a two-for-one deal on filet mignon: $3.75 for the steak, soup or salad, potato, vegetable, and bread and butter with a second serving of the same for free (via Restaurant-ing through History). Meanwhile in 1966, multiple restaurants nationally ran a promotion with Hoover for a free steak dinner with the purchase of any Hoover appliance.

Those steak prices might seem like a dream to the average restaurant-goer today. An eight-ounce filet mignon at an Outback Steakhouse in Peabody, Massachusetts — near where the Hilltop Steakhouse once was — today is around $34, while at the upscale Morton's Steakhouse in Boston, an eight-ounce filet mignon costs $62. (Outback's price includes sides; Morton's does not.) The 1967 price of $4.25 would be around $43 today when adjusted for inflation, landing squarely in between the mass-market Outback Steakhouse price and the luxury Morton's price. In other words, these prices are roughly where they might be expected given the rate of inflation.

How about store-bought steaks? Philadelphia shoppers could find raw sirloin steaks on special at Pantry Pride supermarkets in 1967 for $0.69 per pound. Pantry Pride's competitor Penn Fruit advertised sirloin steaks discounted to $0.67 per pound in 1963, up to $0.98 per pound by 1969. The same year, Philadelphia Acme Markets advertised sirloin steaks at $0.89 a pound. Today, at Philadelphia-area Acme locations, USDA choice petite sirloin steaks are priced around $11 per pound — compared to roughly $7 to $9 that inflation alone would suggest. That's not entirely a surprise, given 1960s' prices were limited-time discounts rather than the daily price Acme has today.