Guac Shock: Avocado Prices Have Never Been This High For A Super Bowl

Countdown to Super Bowl 56 is four days away (as of Thursday morning). The annual playoff championship game of the National Football League (NFL) will feature the Los Angeles Rams versus Cincinnati Bengals. There are estimates that 117 million viewers will watch the game, increasing 21% compared to the 2021 Super Bowl. It’s a US tradition that many households host Super Bowl parties, an excuse to drink beer and eat game-day finger foods with friends, family, and even co-workers.

For the millions of Americans hosting Super Bowl parties, they’re likely to pay some of the highest food costs on record as global food prices surge to near-record highs. We want to concentrate on everyone’s favorite game-day finger foods besides chicken wings, that is, guacamole and chips.

According to Bloomberg data, the price of a 20-pound box of avocados from the state of Michoacan, Mexico (the central hub of Mexican avocado production) is around $26.89, the highest ever for this time of year with data going back to 1998.

This year alone, avocado prices are up 31%.

There are many reasons for rising avocado prices, including widespread supply-chain bottlenecks, increased freight costs, labor shortages, and higher commodity costs to operate farms, among many other variables.

One sure thing is higher food costs for Super Bowl parties will impact the pocketbooks of Americans. On Thursday morning, the consumer price index came in like a smoking hot tamale, +7.3% YoY (Core +5.9% YoY), but was underestimated as the headline printed a shocking +7.5% YoY – the highest since March 1982.