I'm still waiting for hamburgers to cost $25.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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$5 in 1994 is $11 in 2026.
If your inflation calculation excludes housing, education, and medical care, maybe.
Yup, exactly how the BLS CPI calculator works
That's cost of living, a separate measurement, and is also a significant factor.
yeah I was gonna say that $5 for me at the grocery store is more like $20 now. One thing I complain about a lot is places that won't take over a $20 nowadays. Yeah in the 80's I could understand when you would get change after buying the weeks groceries with one, but since $100 is the largest denomination consumers have access to they should accept anything.
I've definitely seen a couple places here in Chicago with $11 milkshakes. Jojo's Shake Bar comes to mind.
Oh for sure, and I'm sure I'd react to that like Vincent did to a $5 shake in 1994.
My local restaurants serve milkshakes for $8 so, not as bad
That was 30 years ago though. That's like comparing 90s prices with 60s prices.
We can get waaaaaay more cooked.
It’s one banana, Michael. How much could it cost? $10?
McDonald's has the most expensive shakes for fast food where I am, and they're still just under $5 (unless you get the shamrock shake; that's $5.15). Everywhere else is around $3.
None of them are even half the size of the milkshake from the film, tho.
They don't put any bourbon or anything in them?
Maybe thats why the shamrock shake is more expensive 🤔
No, it's the ground-up Leprechaun add in.
What fast food places near you have ~~more expensive~~ cheaper shakes than McDonald's? I just did a quick check and McD's was cheaper than Culver's and Shake Shack near me.
McDonalds has the most expensive shakes near me
What fast food places near you have more expensive shakes
🤷♂️
I literally said McDonald's is the most expensive one. 🤨
My bad, I meant to say cheaper. McDonald's looks to be the cheapest fast food shake near me in Chicago.
Wendy's, Jack in the Box, In-n-Out, Raising Cane's, Burger King, Dairy Queen, and Foster Freeze all are cheaper by almost 2 dollars. I didn't check Taco Bell; do they even have shakes?
I wonder if it has anything to do with how local the dairy itself is. I am in the central valley of california surrounded by dairy farms.
Maybe. Chicago is fairly high CoL, but so is CA. And we have a lot of dairy just north of the cheddar curtain, it's usually priced either the same as other goods or cheaper.
Taco Bell has some abomination of a cookie flavored slurpee, I think it’s the closest they’ve gotten. It’s four bucks.
I got a cookies n creme one from Cookout for $3.64 the other day
I haven't seen the film, but everything I see around me is $7.00 or more.
Do McDonald's shake machines work now? They used to always be down when I was younger. It was a sad day when DQ closed and the only shake option was to drive 30 minutes for a Wendy's frosty shake
I saw it in the theater at the time and I remember thinking "Why is he making such a big deal over the price?"
Basically what I'm saying is, $5 was not a outrageous price for a milkshake if you lived in a city at the time.
I always consider the profit margins on whatever I'm buying.
The profit margins are insane for a $5 milkshake. Even if you think you're not getting ripped off, you are.
The same goes for coffee and soft drinks. You're paying meat-prices for no meat and the businesses are pocketing the difference.
General consensus is the movie took place around 1982. $5 then would be almost $20 now, possibly more.
Would you buy it?
Would you buy it?
If everyone around me was doing it, sure!
spoiler
Just kidding, but this is how the average idiot thinks these days.
Why buy it for 20 when you can doordash it for 40 though?
Hardees/ Carls jr. used to advertise a 1/4 cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato as the "six dollar burger" as a dig at casual dining restaurants.
Today it's called the "famous star" and is $6.39.
They've had the famous star on their menu even before their quarter pound "six dollar burger" options came out in the mid 00s.
Famous stars were more like their signature/original burger (I guess that and the Western Bacon burger) and were priced lower than their premium line of six dollar burgers or even most of their promotional stuff.
That's how far we've fallen lol. The price didn't just go up 36 cents, their original tier burger either doubled or tripled in price (even outside of a meal offering) depending on where you live and they discontinued the premium Angus beef burger line because nobody can afford it/they continue to enshitify their menu and quality of their ingredients/sourcing.
There's always been inflation. It was relatively low until CoVID, then it jumped for a short while.
This isn't inflation, we've been in gouging territory for decades now.
Inflation is an increase in the average price of goods and services in terms of money. It doesn't matter if it's because of price gouging, or bailouts, or war.
Specifically on milkshakes? If it's on everything it pretty much looks and acts like inflation anyway.
A $5.00 milkshake in the middle of 1993, when the movie was shot, would cost $11.22 today if it went up at the same rate as the CPI.
I was just thinking of this scene the other day after getting my kids the smallest size, non fancy milkshake at a local place, they were each about $6
Being Canadian I was so wondering at prices in the states (from tv, movies) during the early 90s. You'd see a greasy spoon diner have breakfast for like $3.50 in them, usually closer to $6-7 up here for the same (noticbly more after exchange rate). The crappy fast food milkshakes were like $4 minimum let alone a theme restraunt with Steve Buscemi as a waiter.
Though I do often use the inflation calculation when I see a price from the 90s and earlier these days just to make sure I got the right perspective on cost.