Realytics Finds US Consumers More Negative on Price Hikes Than UK

Realytics, a data analytics firm, has released findings from a comprehensive study that reveals a stark difference in consumer sentiment following large menu price hikes in the United States compared to the United Kingdom. The analysis, which spanned 15 markets, found that large menu price increases were followed by a rise in negative price sentiment more than twice as large in the US as in the UK.

According to the Realytics analysis, relative to venues that did not raise prices, the share of negative price opinions rose by 5.4 percentage points in the US and 2.3 points in the UK over the following three months. This means that before large increases, about 33 in every 100 price opinions were negative; afterward, the share increased to about 38. The estimates compare changes before and after a rise with changes at venues in the same country and month without a price increase.

The study defines a large increase as at least a quarter of a venue's online menu items rising in price in one month, typically by 8% or more. Smaller increases, typically under 5%, were associated with less than one additional negative opinion per 100 price opinions in the combined estimate across all 15 markets. The analysis covers increases from September 2025 to May 2026 and opinions from June 2025 to August 2026, allowing three months before and after each increase and excluding the month of the increase.

Realytics found that the association between menu price increases and subsequent consumer sentiment was statistically clear in 14 of the 15 markets. The overall gap in negative price opinions between the US and the UK was about 2.5 percentage points across the 15 markets. The 95% intervals for the estimated increases in negative price opinions are 4.7 to 6.0 percentage points for the US and 0.9 to 3.6 for the UK.

The broader menu analysis found that 82.4% of price changes were increases, with a median increase of 5.9%. Restaurants also sometimes changed many prices together: in 21.5% of menu repricings, at least half of the tracked items changed price in the same month. The analysis covers increases from September 2025 to September 2026 and uses a 10% sample of menu items, providing about 90 million comparisons of the same item's price at the same venue in consecutive months. Each comparison counts equally, regardless of sales volume, and changes of 0.5% or more are counted.

Realytics maintains a longitudinal panel of physical businesses, using consistent outlet and brand identities to track the same entities over time. The company's proprietary methods cross-check records, filter unreliable signals, and turn them into comparable metrics across geographies, categories, and time periods. Realytics' traffic estimates show a correlation above 0.94 with Technomic sales data, population estimates correlate above 0.90 with ACS and national census data, and local spend capacity in Cafés & Restaurants correlates above 0.92 with ACS income data. Demographics and CSAT are cross-checked against clients' first-party data.