Cheeseburger Menu Index softens as dairy prices decline

The Cheeseburger Menu Index shows weekly movements in European agri-food markets by tracking a fixed basket of ingredients used to produce a cheeseburger, a milkshake and a portion of fries. In week 48, the Index recorded a slight decline as dairy markets weakened further, driven by sharp drops in raw milk and SMP, while sugar showed a modest recovery after earlier losses.The new DCA Cheeseburger Menu Index is a weekly cost change indicator developed exclusively by DCA Market Intelligence, based on market price quotations and designed to capture how different agri-food markets move collectively. The core idea of the tool is to connect and observe trends across different commodity markets, making benchmark prices, indices, data and insights accessible and appealing at a glance. The Menu is composed of three sub-indices: the Cheeseburger, the Fries, and the Milkshake. Each reflects a fixed recipe, where ingredients are linked to representative commodity benchmarks for meat, grains, oils, dairy and sugar in the European market.In week 48, the Cheeseburger Menu Index closed at 109.39 (base: w12025), showing a slight decline of 0.5% compared to last week. The drop was mainly driven by the dairy sector, with the Milkshake Index falling to 70.41 (-3.9%). The Fries Index remained stable at 98.4, and the Cheeseburger Index stayed at 119.45, still elevated after this year’s strong increases in the meat market. When looking at coefficients of variation, the Milkshake recorded the highest level this year at 12%, reflecting both dairy seasonality and the recent broad price declines.Price declines in dairy The main pressure this week came from raw milk prices. The Milkshake Index considers DCA milk prices across three main NWE regions (Germany, the Netherlands and France). The strongest declines come from South Germany and the Netherlands, with prices at €30.5 (-10.3%) and €28.5 (-6.6%) per 100 kilos respectively. This is a consequence of the high supply of milk in the market, while demand remains limited. With the impact being reflected in the whole dairy segment: food-grade skimmed milk powder (SMP) continued its downward trend across Northwestern Europe, closing at €2,060 per ton, and DCA mild cheddar prices eased to €3,285 per ton.Sugar prices increase and meat market is stable Sugar provided a small moderating effect for the Milkshake Index. Prices in the futures market of New York and London have been rising again after the declines at the beginning of November. Still, this upward move does not necessarily indicate optimism in the sector. Considering that the International Sugar Organization (ISO) estimates a surplus of 1.6 million tons for the 2025/26 season, which keeps the market outlook under pressure. A large share of the menu still comes from the meat market. According to Eurostat, O-grade cow carcass prices peaked in week 41 at €632.54 per 100 kg and have since eased to €607.68 per 100 kg in week 47 (latest data point available), a marginal weekly change of –0.07%. Conclusion Overall, the slight decline in the Cheeseburger Menu Index for week 48 was almost entirely driven by the dairy sector. Meat prices remain stable in a weekly base, sugar is moving but still shaped by a generally bearish outlook, and the other components showed little change.