Your favorite Bay Area treat has likely doubled in price since 2015, and while inflation is slowing, price increases will certainly be on the menu again in the near future as the region braces for the impact of President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
Inflation has risen 36% nationally in the past decade and it is painfully obvious at your favorite local sandwich spot and coffee shops. Many stores have had to update their prices so frequently that once-printed prices are covered up using paper, markers and tape.
Using online reviews and photographs of menus from years past, the Bay Area News Group tracked the price of several iconic Bay Area food items to see how inflation has affected your morning donut run, your mid-week office lunch or that late-night burrito.
Right outside the gates of San Jose State University sits La Victoria, a local fast casual burrito chain famous for its iconic orange sauce. Based on photos of the menu from online reviews going back a decade, a regular burrito was $5.45 in February 2015. Since then, the price has been raised at least eight times, and as of May 2025 cost $12.95.
“If you go back 15 years, burritos were still like $4,” remembers Nick Barrita, the operations manager for La Victoria. “Everything was pretty steady. We would raise prices by 50 cents here and there, but then when COVID hit, everything just skyrocketed,” said Barrita, who has worked at La Vic, as the restaurant is widely known, for over two decades.
“It’s just mind boggling to think that everything has doubled in price, including labor,” Barrita said.
Rebecca Ham, a San Jose native who used to go to La Victoria more frequently, said if she needs a cheap meal now, she finds herself next door at a national fast-food chain instead.
“When you get low on money, you might want a burrito, but you can’t afford a burrito,” Ham said. “It’s just crazy.”
While long-time fans of the burritos and orange sauce might lament how their go-to meal has more than doubled in price, the increase is similar around the Bay Area for many local gems and big chains.
Looking at the data compiled by this news organization, Sean Randolph, senior director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, a local think tank, pointed to the period of upswings between 2020 and 2024. “You can see the pandemic effect coming in,” he said. Since 2020, “shortages due to supply chain disruptions combined with accelerated federal spending,” to drive consumer prices up, he said.
Randolph said those factors are not unique to the region, but are compounded by the fact that “everything here is just more expensive anyway.”
Even the most affordable options have gotten much more expensive. A double-double from In-N-Out, specifically at the Alameda location, was $3.70 in June of 2015. A decade later, the same burger costs $6.25, a 69% increase.
A dozen regular donuts at Colonial Donuts on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland was an even $12 in March 2016, but the price has been updated a handful of times since then, and now those twelve donuts cost $22. That’s an increase of 83% in 10 years.
Census data shows income has also grown significantly in the past decade, but not as quickly as most of the food items we tracked. California’s median household income grew 48% from $64,500 in 2015 to $95,500 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. The minimum wage in the state has grown 83%, from $9 in 2015 to $16.50 in 2025.
While inflation ballooned in the first years of the decade, the month-to-month increases in prices have slowed in recent months. But not all prices follow the same trajectory and some categories have grown even faster, like groceries and eating out, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Food prices are considered to be volatile,” said Randolph, the economist. “It is just a little bit of a different category with different drivers than inflation broadly,” though he said these prices certainly reflect people’s experiences eating out.
Even Angie Marquez, a freshman at San Jose State University, has noted price changes at her favorite banh mi spot near campus. “I remember last semester you could add extra veggies, no charge. Now we have to pay for those veggies,” she said.
“I understand, because I know things are getting expensive,” Marquez said. “But I’m a broke college student.”
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At La Victoria, it is getting more expensive and harder to source some materials, like their custom printed cups and other packaging from China. The company tried to get ahead of it and put in a big order at the end of last year, Barrita said. But now because of the chaos, the new supplies are delayed and he is not sure when they will come in, or what tariffs they will have to pay when they actually ship.
“Everybody is scrambling, because they don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Barrita said.
The Bay Area News Group will continue to track the prices of these items in the coming months. Check back for more stories.
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