McChicken Index™ — Tracking Fast Food Inflation

CURRENT INDEX VALUE

—

$— per McChicken

Base: 100 = $1.00 (January 2014)

WHAT IS THE MCCHICKEN INDEX?

The McChicken Index™ tracks the average price of a McDonald's McChicken sandwich in the United States as an economic indicator for food price inflation, labor costs, and consumer purchasing power.

Inspired by The Economist's famous Big Mac Index — which uses Big Mac prices to measure purchasing power parity between countries — our McChicken Index focuses on tracking a single standardized menu item over time within the US to illustrate domestic food inflation.

The McChicken was chosen because it was a cornerstone of McDonald's Dollar Menu from its inception in 2002 through 2017, making it an ideal baseline for measuring how fast food prices have evolved alongside broader economic forces.

METHODOLOGY

INDEX CALCULATION

Index Value = (National Avg McChicken Price / $1.00) × 100

Example: If the national average is $2.99, the index value is 299 (a 199% increase from the base period).

BASE PERIOD: JANUARY 2014

We use January 2014 as our base period with a base price of $1.00. The McChicken was part of McDonald's Dollar Menu, which kept it at exactly $1.00 from 2002 through the menu's restructuring in late 2013.

DATA COLLECTION

Price data is collected weekly via AI-powered web search aggregation across multiple sources:

▸MenuPriceTracker.com (9,000+ McDonald's locations)
▸McDonald's official app/website pricing
▸Fast food price aggregator sites
▸News articles reporting McDonald's prices

CONSTITUENT COMPONENTS

These economic indicators provide context for price movements. They are not used in the index calculation but help explain why the McChicken price changes.

CPI for Food Away From Home

Consumer Price Index for restaurant and takeout food — Bureau of Labor Statistics

Chicken Wholesale Price

National broiler chicken composite wholesale price — USDA

Food Service Worker Wages

Average hourly earnings for food services workers — Bureau of Labor Statistics

Federal Minimum Wage

Federal minimum wage floor — US Department of Labor

HISTORICAL DATA

Loading historical data...

API ACCESS

The McChicken Index is available as a free, public JSON API. No authentication required.

ENDPOINT

GET https://mcchickenindex.org/api/mcchicken

QUERY PARAMETERS

Parameter	Type	Description
range	string	Optional. One of: 1M, 3M, 6M, 1Y, 3Y, 5Y, ALL. Includes historical data in response.

EXAMPLE RESPONSE

{
  "index": {
    "value": 299,
    "price": 2.99,
    "change": 0.1,
    "changePercent": 3.45,
    "basePeriod": "2014-01",
    "basePrice": 1,
    "lastUpdated": "2026-04-10T08:00:00Z",
    "methodologyVersion": "1.0"
  },
  "api": {
    "version": "1.0",
    "documentation": "https://mcchickenindex.org/methodology"
  }
}