The Brunch Index: See how inflation is impacting the cost of your meal

Whether you’re a sweet tooth or a savoury person, the cost of making brunch has risen considerably over the past year as the prices of everyday items have grown with inflation. But some ingredients will set you back much more than others.

Inflation rose by 3.6 per cent over the year to March, according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Consumer Price Index, down from 4.1 per cent in 2023.

In the three months to the end of March, inflation rose by 1 per cent, driven in part by food and non-alcoholic beverages.

While it was a main contributor to both quarterly and annual inflation, price increases for food and drinks have continued to ease. It fell to 3.8 per cent in the year to March, down from 4.5 per cent in the year to December and well below the 9.2 per cent peak in December 2022.

Prices rises for bread, cereals and eggs are still high, but are starting to ease, and meat prices continue to track down. Fruit prices have even gone backwards, thanks in part to the seasonal nature of fresh produce.

Does falling inflation mean a cheaper breakfast?

Unfortunately, not necessarily. A lower rate of inflation means prices are rising at a slower pace, not that prices are falling (of course, if the rate of inflation is negative, that means prices have eased slightly).

This is why ongoing high inflation is bad - prices for goods and services get set at higher levels, so excluding discounts or sales it means those products will always cost more than previously.

How are these price changes measured?

Inflation does not work evenly across all the things households buy. The prices of some goods and services will rise faster than others or even continue to rise as others fall, depending on factors from consumer demand and business supply, to natural disasters and holiday periods.

In its consumer price index, the ABS looks at price changes across a range of ordinary goods and services purchased regularly by households.

This “basket” of goods is weighted, depending on how many of those goods households typically buy. Australians spend less and less on tobacco products, for example, but nearly a quarter of the inflation basket is taken up by housing.

The quarterly inflation figures from the ABS are more robust than the monthly figures - firstly the quarterly figures measure more price changes, and because there is more data it is less volatile.

To take a closer look at how inflation changes, and can differ from product to product, we’re diving into the inflation data every three months to see how the prices for the ingredients for some breakfast favourites have changed.

This isn’t an index in the classic sense - we would need to weigh all the brunch ingredients and create one graph for that - but not everyone eats and drinks all these items, and it’s interesting to see how much prices change in specific products (coffee, we’re looking at you).

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