The McChicken Index™ tracks U.S. fast-food inflation through one standardized item — the McDonald's McChicken — and anchors it to the real cost of producing and selling that item. Inspired by The Economist's Big Mac Index, but extended with an input-cost model so the headline reflects financial reality, not just menu-board promotions.

Three layered series, all base period January 2014 = 100:

Margin Spread = Retail Index − Cost-Basis Index. A positive spread means the menu price is outrunning input costs (margin expansion); negative means costs are outrunning the menu price (McDonald's absorbing cost). This is the headline analytic signal for investors and researchers.

The 60/40 blend keeps a transient promotion (e.g. a value-menu rollback) from swinging the headline while still letting observed prices lead. When a cost input is temporarily unavailable, its weight is redistributed across the remaining inputs and the published confidence flag drops to partial; if no cost data is available the headline falls back to retail-only and says so. We never substitute an estimated number.

Weights approximate quick-service-restaurant unit economics (food, labor, and occupancy/overhead each ≈ a third of operating cost; operating margin excluded):

Economic inputs come from authoritative BLS series via the St. Louis Fed (FRED). The observed retail price has no public API, so it is gathered weekly by AI web search of price aggregators (primarily MenuPriceTracker) and validated before publishing.

• ▸ Chicken, whole (per lb) — BLS via FRED (APU0000706111)
• ▸ Leisure & hospitality wage — BLS via FRED (CES7000000003)
• ▸ Core CPI (overhead proxy) — BLS via FRED (CPILFESL)
• ▸ CPI: Food away from home — BLS via FRED (CUSR0000SEFV)
• ▸ Retail McChicken price — MenuPriceTracker & fast-food aggregators (AI-aggregated, validated)

Every weekly retail read passes three checks before it can enter the index:

• Plausibility band: a national average outside $1.50–$6.00 is rejected.
• Average-vs-minimum guard: if the reported "average" equals the range minimum, it is treated as the cheapest price (not the average) and rejected — the failure mode that once put a spurious $1.79 / index-179 point in the data.
• Week-over-week guard: moves over ±15% are quarantined and withheld until a second independent reading confirms the new level, so a one-off bad read is never published while genuine regime shifts still come through.

Update cadence: weekly, Mondays 08:00 UTC. Method version 2.0.

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The McChicken was a $1.00 Dollar Menu staple through the menu's 2013 restructuring. Supporting evidence:

Free, public, no authentication.

Returns headline, retail and cost-basis layers, margin spread, week-over-week change, confidence, and (with range) the full series. Ranges: 1M, 3M, 6M, 1Y, 3Y, 5Y, ALL.