this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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Let’s see… quarter pound patties are a little on the big end so assume 3oz patties, that’s 3.75 lbs of beef which is also about what 80/20 costs per pound on sale here. So a little over 14$ for the beef, buns are a buck fifty or so for an eight pack, you need three to make twenty burgers so that’s about 4.50$ more. Now you gotta put lettuce tomato pickle and onion on your twenty burgers that’s about a quarter head of lettuce, so a buck there, two or three cheap slicer tomatoes there’s two dollars, honestly fifty cents worth of pickles if you put four on each one and probably one onion is overkill so let’s round up to a whole dollar there.
Tbh excluding the condiments a dollar twenty five or so for a burger made at home is about right. If you wanted to go overboard the probably 1/8 jar of mayo and 1/4 squirt bottle of mustard is a buck or two. Now you’re a few bucks over but it’s an all the way burger not some knuckleheads “whatever I had in the fridge” concoction.
I used the sale price of ground beef because it’s the most expensive thing and if you’re cooking at home the most expensive component of a meal being on sale is what prompts you to make it.
Hmm, so my current sale price on that beef is $16.83 and as the other person pointed out a 3 oz before-grilling burger is well below what anyone would be satisfied with. So at most I'm making 15 burgers with that and that's not including tax. If you're going back to 2007 for those $1.50 buns can you buy me a truck load or two while you're at it? Even the store brand here on sale are $1.79 and again that's not including tax. Bringing our pre-tax total to $22.20... shall I continue? Everyone I know who eats burgers prefers cheese on them so that a few more dollars on top of the other toppings/condiments too.
Either you live somewhere even cheaper than the small town I'm from, significantly, and also do not pay sales tax, or from where I'm sitting there is not way in hell you're making 20 burgers with $25. That's not even if you skimp on the meat, get everything on sale, and provide barely any toppings. To be honest with you, the last time that ratio seems possible was like 10-15 years ago.
I like my burgers that size. With the meat hand mixed, salted and peppered etc it adds a lot of flavor to the rest of the thing without being overwhelming. Double or triple will get you more meat without sacrificing crust or cook time. That is of course, more burgers on your sandwitch.
I thought a buck fifty was high for buns, but not everyone has a bakery thrift so I went by Walmart’s generic price for gv brand buns. You should not sleep on the Walmart bakery if there is one near you, they have ~$1 unsliced loaves.
Adjusting for tax is easy. Just multiply by your grocery tax rate like *1.08 or whatever.
The person said hamburgers and if you order a hamburger you don’t get cheese. At this volume though it almost makes sense to put the kraft singles back on the shelf and use half slices of velveeta. Much cheaper and tbh on a generic burger perfectly tasty and very photogenic.
All the way is not “barely any toppings”. Pickles, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo and mustard is a good burger!
I got half a mind to cook burgers tonight and double check my math but my wife would be pissed. 😡 Why are there two dozen fully assembled cheeseburgers on a half sheet in the fridge! 🤷 To test my abilities, also we need to buy more velveeta to make broccoli cheese soup so girls night is cancelled.
We have differing opinions here obviously. I try to avoid wal-mart as much as I can for several reasons, and that might be key to your ability to make 20 burgers for $25. I mean, granting you everything you're claiming I am still doubting it. For me, even if I went price shopping, and forced myself to be okay with smaller burgers, I'd still be extremely hard pressed to do that, I honestly don't think it would be possible here. Where I live the cost of living is higher than average, but also when I compare grocery prices to small rural towns, they typically aren't too different.
Anyhow, this whole discussion started around how burgers are supposedly $25 now at restaurants. Which isn't true at all. And also the higher priced burgers people are complaining about here will never be just "Pickles, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo and mustard". They likely will have blue cheese, bacon, avocado, and other higher priced ingredients on them. They likely will be larger than a quarter pound. Not really comparable to the burgers you are describing. You can dismiss that if you like, but personally I love burgers, just not the way you describe them. I don't like raw onions, mustard, mayo, or really even lettuce typically, on my burger. I guess I have expensive tastes when it comes to burgers or something, because I didn't even think I liked them until I was like 15 and I found that they can be made with many different toppings that I do like.
I’m not dismissing what you like. I just used a very common definition of burger for the question of “how many burgers can you make for $25.”
The food has changed a lot in the last few decades. The McDonald’s quarter pounder used to be advertised as a big burger. That’s just four ounces!
Restaurants may not actually sell you a $25 burger, but the $15 burger is made possible because you get a minuscule amount of the expensive ingredient and they can turn the leftover avocado or bleu into guac or Cesar salad and sell that to you as well.
I can’t recommend moving to multiple smaller patties as opposed to one big one enough though. You get more flavor that way, they cook faster and there’s a very convenient place to put more cheese.
I didn't mean you were dismissing my tastes really, just that ingredient differences would be relevant to this discussion. These kinds of threads tend to drift in focus due to UI issues (hard to view the whole thread without getting distracted) and the passage of time, but what I'm getting at is still just that 1) the original comment touting 20 burgers for $25 is between very difficult and impossible from all I know, and 2) even if it were possible, they would be quite different from even most $10, let alone $25 burgers.
Again, our grocery stores here are pretty close to national standard prices but our restaurants are on the expensive end. Despite those facts, I would struggle myself to make even 15 burgers for $25, and at the same time, I have no trouble finding a higher quality (restaurant) burger than those for $10-15. So from my end it feels like there's a lot of exaggeration going on about the restaurant prices when it comes to burgers. We don't need exaggerations to fully agree: food is very expensive now, of course. I easily remember the McDonald's dollar menu. Doesn't even feel that long ago. I'm pretty sure my $3 meal from that era would easily cost $13 at this point, even from McDonald's. Which is a frightening rate of increase (over 4x in ~20 yrs).
The burgers on a real plate and all are 1/4 lbs. Not 3 oz. They are 3oz after cooking though. And the thing is, you can't buy a quarter head of lettuce. So bump all those partials up to full units you can buy. Cause many will have the unused part thrown away. Then don't forget the cost to cook it. Propane, or charcoal, or whatever. And you need something to clean all the dishes and utensiles... we can call the cost of the dishes and utensiles a wash though, just about everyone uses those all the time. But the grill... toss about $5 toward it. The cheap ones don't last long, and you need a flipper and such. Now the big thing you are skipping is the time. Time to go to the store, time to prep. Time to cook, and the worst one usually... time to make a meal plan that includes this before hand, rather than just going out to eat when you haven't planned. And in some families... one or more persons won't eat the damn burger, so you have to make something else they will eat...
Don’t forget that you gotta pay the mortgage and bills to have a roof over your head and the lights on too. You don’t wanna be eating your burgers outside in the dark.
Also true. So safe to say, you cannot get everything you need to make 20 burgers for $25.