“They got the metric system, they wouldn't know what the hell a Quarter Pounder is.”

Vincent Vega · Pulp Fiction, 1994

Royale With Cheese Index

What one identical burger costs when the economy around it changes.

Data confidence: Reconstructed Quote unverified
Film
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Base year
1994
Indexed unit
One McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese
Geography
United States (with cross-country panel)
Currency
USD

One Quarter Pounder with Cheese — the same burger, priced by eight different economies.

Value at 1994

$2.15

Value at last verified date (2025)

$6.29

The metric system changed the name. Taxes, wages and purchasing power changed everything else.

Nominal change
+192.6%

1994 to 2025, unadjusted

Compound annual growth
+3.5% a year

Across 31 years

1994 value in 2025 money
$4.67

Base value restated using CPI

Real appreciation
+34.6%

Net of general inflation

Minutes of work, 1994
11 minutes

US median earnings, full-time workers

Minutes of work, 2025
14 minutes

1.2× the 1994 burden

Latest observation
Provisional

The 2025 figure is not yet final. Values on this page will move when it publishes.

Base year — Theatrical release year of Pulp Fiction. The burger is not priced in the film, so the base value comes from the 1994 US menu survey.

01The series

What it was worth, each year

Nominal local currency by default. Switch modes to strip out inflation, express the figure as earning time, or read it as quantity and percentage change.

Value in the currency of the day, unadjusted.

$1.65$2.94$4.22$5.50$6.7919941999200420092014201920242025Base 19942008: Financial crisis — value menu era2020: Pandemic: menu repricing2022: Beef and labour cost spike

Focus the chart and use ← → to walk the series, Home and End for the ends, Escape to clear.

Quarter Pounder with Cheese, USInterpolatedProvisional
One McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese — Quarter Pounder with Cheese, US: $2.15 in 1994, $6.29 in 2025 — an increase of 192.6% across 32 annual observations.

Did it outrun the benchmarks?

  • US CPI, all itemsOutran

    2.9× vs 2.2×

    Fast food has outrun headline inflation for three decades. Without CPI the burger just looks like money getting smaller.

  • US restaurant CPIOutran

    2.9× vs 2.6×

    The fair comparison: did this burger beat restaurant prices generally, or merely keep up with them?

  • US median earningsOutran

    2.9× vs 2.4×

    The only reading a customer feels — whether a shift buys more burgers than it used to.

02Purchasing-power parity

Same burger. Different economy.

Hold the product physically identical and let the currency, the tax treatment, the wage and the name on the menu change around it. What is left is purchasing-power parity.

The unit never changes

Quarter Pounder with Cheese

United States · USD

Menu price
$6.29
At market rate
$6.29

1 USD/USD

Minutes of work
15.4 min

At median gross hourly wage

Implied PPP rate
1.000

USD per USD, from the two menu prices

Against the market rate

+0.0%

The base of the comparison, by definition.

Menu price excludes sales tax, which varies by state.

Minutes of work per burger

The only column here that compares cleanly without an exchange rate. Switzerland has the dearest burger in dollars and one of the cheapest in working time.

European and Japanese prices include VAT or consumption tax; US prices exclude sales tax. Wages are gross of tax and social contributions, which would reorder several rows on a take-home basis.

03Calculation

The complete equation

Not a footnote. Every step, every number, the dataset it came from and the rounding rule applied to it.

  1. 1 Quarter Pounder with Cheese

    equals the fixed physical unit

    Same patty weight, same cheese, same bun, in every country on the panel.

  2. 1 × $2.15

    equals US menu price, 1994

    National mean of franchise menu boards, excluding sales tax.

    Source: Menu archive survey

  3. 1 × $6.29

    equals US menu price at last verified date

    2025 national mean. Provisional.

    Source: Menu archive survey

  4. price ÷ median hourly wage × 60

    equals minutes of work per burger

    The affordability unit. It is the only figure on the panel that is comparable across countries without an exchange rate.

    Source: OECD / national statistics

  5. local price ÷ US price

    equals implied purchasing-power exchange rate

    Compared against the market rate, this is the Big Mac Index method applied to a burger the film actually names.

    Source: OECD / national statistics

Conversion — One burger, one price. The whole point of the unit is that no conversion is needed — the product is held physically identical while currencies, taxes, wages and menu names change around it.

04Affordability

Price is only the first question

How much it cost, how much the underlying thing appreciated, and how hard it was for a person to afford — three different questions with three different answers.

Time on the clock

How long an average income has to run to cover it.

199411 minutes
202514 minutes

Harder to afford: 1.2× the income burden it carried in 1994.

What the old money buys

What the 1994 outlay of $2.15 would buy at 2025 prices.

1994 prices1 burgers
2025 prices0.34 burgers

The same money buys 34.2% of what it did — the rest is price.

Inflation-adjusted value

What the 1994 price is worth in 2025 money, against what the thing actually costs.

1994 price, restated$4.67
2025 price, actual$6.29

Real appreciation of +34.6%. This part is not inflation — One McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese genuinely got dearer.

05Interpretation

What drove the change

The US price nearly tripled while headline CPI roughly doubled, so about a third of the increase is real. Fast food has been one of the more reliably above-inflation categories in the American basket, driven by beef, labour and rent rather than by anything about the burger.

Against restaurant prices specifically the burger looks far more ordinary. It has broadly tracked food-away-from-home CPI, which is the honest reading: McDonald's did not get unusually expensive, eating out did.

The cross-country panel is where the index earns its name. Switzerland has the most expensive burger in dollars and one of the cheapest in working minutes, because Swiss wages outrun Swiss prices. Japan has the opposite profile. That gap between a price and a wage is the entire content of purchasing-power parity, and a burger is a better teacher of it than an exchange-rate chart.

Beef and dairy input costs

Two commodity cycles — 2014 and 2021–23 — account for much of the step change. Beef is the single largest input in the unit.

Restaurant labour

Minimum-wage increases in large states feed franchise menu boards directly, which is why the US mean hides a wide urban/rural spread.

Tax treatment

European menu prices include VAT; US prices exclude sales tax. A naive currency comparison silently compares tax-inclusive with tax-exclusive prices.

Local wage levels

The same burger costs 13 minutes of work in Australia and 20 in France. Neither figure has anything to do with the burger.

What this index does not claim

  • The line is paraphrased from memory of the scene and is not yet checked against the shooting script or authorised subtitles.
  • Franchisees set their own prices. A single national mean is a convenience, not an observation.
  • European prices are VAT-inclusive and US prices are not. The panel labels this, but it makes the raw currency column less comparable than it looks.
  • Wages are gross. Take-home affordability would reorder several countries on the panel.
  • The Quarter Pounder is not sold in India at all — McDonald's India sells no beef. That is shown on the panel rather than substituted with a different product.
06Provenance

Source ledger

Every dataset behind this page, with the adjustments applied on the way in and how gaps are treated. Last verified 31 December 2025.

  • McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese — US menu price, $Duku Design menu-archive survey / The Economist Big Mac IndexData confidence: Reconstructed1994–2025
    Publisher
    Duku Design menu-archive survey / The Economist Big Mac Index
    Date range
    1994-01-01 to 2025-12-31
    Geography
    United States
    Frequency
    annual
    Original unit
    $ per burger, franchise menu boards
    Normalised unit
    $ per Quarter Pounder with Cheese, US national mean
    Currency
    USD
    Adjustments
    McDonald's prices are set by franchisees, so a national mean hides a wide urban/rural spread. Sales tax is excluded because it varies by state.
    Missing data
    Odd years interpolated between surveyed years.
    Last checked
    2025-12-31
    Licensing
    Compiled from archived menus and published indices, cited with attribution
    Source
    https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index
  • Median gross hourly earnings by country — local currencyOECD Earnings Database and national statistical officesData confidence: Reconstructed2025–2025
    Publisher
    OECD Earnings Database and national statistical offices
    Date range
    2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31
    Geography
    OECD member countries
    Frequency
    annual
    Original unit
    Local currency per hour, median gross earnings
    Normalised unit
    Local currency per hour
    Currency
    Multiple
    Adjustments
    Gross of tax and social contributions. Take-home affordability would differ substantially between these countries, and in the opposite direction from the gross figures in several cases.
    Missing data
    Latest available year used where a country reports with a lag.
    Last checked
    2025-12-31
    Licensing
    Public statistics, cited with attribution
    Source
    https://data-explorer.oecd.org/
  • CPI for all urban consumers, all items — annual average, 1982–84 = 100U.S. Bureau of Labor StatisticsData confidence: Verified1994–2025
    Publisher
    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
    Date range
    1994-01-01 to 2025-12-31
    Geography
    United States (urban)
    Frequency
    annual
    Original unit
    Index, 1982–84 = 100
    Normalised unit
    Index, 1982–84 = 100
    Currency
    USD
    Missing data
    None.
    Last checked
    2025-12-31
    Licensing
    Public domain (US federal statistics)
    Source
    https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
  • CPI for all urban consumers, food away from home — annual average, 1982–84 = 100U.S. Bureau of Labor StatisticsData confidence: Verified1994–2025
    Publisher
    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
    Date range
    1994-01-01 to 2025-12-31
    Geography
    United States (urban)
    Frequency
    annual
    Original unit
    Index, 1982–84 = 100
    Normalised unit
    Index, 1982–84 = 100
    Currency
    USD
    Adjustments
    Restaurant inflation, not headline CPI. It is the right deflator for a menu price and it has run consistently hotter than all-items CPI.
    Missing data
    None. The 2025 average is provisional.
    Last checked
    2025-12-31
    Licensing
    Public domain (US federal statistics)
    Source
    https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
  • Median usual weekly earnings, full-time wage and salary workers — monthly equivalent, $U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population SurveyData confidence: Verified1994–2025
    Publisher
    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey
    Date range
    1994-01-01 to 2025-12-31
    Geography
    United States
    Frequency
    annual
    Original unit
    $ per week, median, current dollars
    Normalised unit
    $ per month (weekly × 52 ÷ 12)
    Currency
    USD
    Adjustments
    Full-time workers only, so it excludes the part-time and tipped workforce most exposed to restaurant prices. Work-time conversions assume a 40-hour week.
    Missing data
    Odd years interpolated. The 2025 value is provisional.
    Last checked
    2025-12-31
    Licensing
    Public domain (US federal statistics)
    Source
    https://www.bls.gov/cps/

Pop Indices is editorial and educational. Historical returns are described, never projected, and nothing here is investment advice. Film titles, characters and dialogue are referenced for commentary and remain the property of their rights holders.

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A figure that travels without its source is the thing this section exists to avoid, so the export always includes the credit line.

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