Think about the last time you looked at a brunch menu and felt your stomach drop before your fork even hit the plate. That moment when you realize you’re about to spend the equivalent of three days’ worth of groceries on eggs and toast. Brunch has become a weekend ritual for millions, yet the average price of breakfast items rose 17.4% in Top 500 limited-service restaurant chains and 13% in Top 500 full-service restaurant chains over just two years. The question is, where exactly is all that money going?
Let’s be real here. The markup on certain brunch staples is nothing short of eye-watering, especially when you consider what restaurants actually pay for ingredients.
Avocado Toast
Here’s the thing about avocado toast. It’s become the poster child for millennial spending habits and ridiculously overpriced brunch items. The average cost is $6.78, with the cheapest avocado toast going for $2 and the most expensive going for $18 according to payment data from hundreds of sellers, though some luxury spots charge significantly more. For a $10 avocado toast using a whole organic avocado at almost $3, plus whole-grain bread, sesame seeds, and other garnishes, ingredients total around $3.50 – or about 35 percent of the menu price.
The rest of that cost? Another 30 percent accounts for labor costs, 12 percent covers rent and utilities, and 15 percent for “everything else,” including printing menus, insurance, and repairs. Still, it’s hard not to feel a bit ripped off when you’re paying double digits for something you could easily assemble at home in under five minutes. Some restaurants have even pushed the boundaries further, with a swanky lounge serving a $38 avocado toast and a San Francisco cafe offering avocado toast topped with caviar and gold leaf for a cool $50.
Bottomless Mimosas
Bottomless mimosas sound like a fantastic deal until you realize what you’re actually drinking. The math behind this brunch staple is revealing. The average cost breaks down to 12 cents per Mimosa, plus the costs of cheap non-natural orange juice. Restaurants typically use bottom-shelf sparkling wine, with restaurants looking for very cheap bubbly to put into drinks like Mimosas – we’re talking $2 or $3 a bottle, wholesale.
Brunch is a massive cash cow for restaurants, with food generally made with cheaper ingredients than dinners and a high margin on each dish, so even by giving away 12 cents worth of sparkling wine, they’re cashing in. The real kicker? Some restaurants limit how long you can sit there and enjoy your “unlimited” Mimosas, meaning it’s actually limited to how many you can down in 120 minutes. Most bottomless mimosa deals are priced between $15–$30 per person, depending on the restaurant and menu, which seems reasonable until you factor in the actual cost to the establishment.
Eggs Benedict
Eggs Benedict carries an air of sophistication, which restaurants happily charge you for. The reality is much simpler. At one restaurant, eggs Benedict costs $26, featuring a poached egg, Canadian bacon and grilled asparagus atop buttermilk pancakes, while another restaurant updates the hollandaise-cloaked classic with prosciutto di cotto and pickled onion for $17. Most eggs Benedict dishes hover in this range, yet the actual ingredients are remarkably cheap.
Poached eggs, Canadian bacon, English muffins, and hollandaise sauce don’t exactly break the bank when you’re buying wholesale. Eggs have been a particularly volatile item, with operators experiencing dramatic food cost spikes, yet even with recent price increases, the markup remains substantial. The most extreme example? Delmonico’s launched a $52 Royal Eggs Benedict dish featuring Maine lobster, black truffle, and Ossetra caviar, available alongside the restaurant’s $27 classic Eggs Benedict. Honestly, unless you’re getting lobster and caviar, paying over twenty bucks for eggs on bread feels excessive.
Specialty Coffee Drinks
Coffee might be the biggest stealth markup on any brunch menu. Coffee has some of the biggest markup in the hospitality industry, with a markup of 80% or higher for every drink. The profit margins are staggering. The profit margin on brewed coffee typically ranges from 70-85% per cup, while specialty drinks like lattes and mochas see margins between 65-80%.
Coffee shops typically apply a markup of 4-5 times the cost of materials, meaning a drink costing $1 in materials might be priced at $4-5. That latte you’re paying five or six bucks for? The actual espresso, milk, cup, and lid together cost the restaurant less than a dollar fifty. The wild part is customers seem totally fine with this markup because coffee has become such an ingrained part of the dining-out experience. I know it sounds crazy, but we’ve collectively agreed to pay quadruple the ingredient cost just to avoid making our own coffee.
Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice
Fresh squeezed orange juice occupies a strange space on brunch menus. Restaurants charge premium prices, often between six and ten dollars for a small glass, banking on the perception that “fresh squeezed” equals superior quality and health benefits. The labor involved in squeezing oranges does add some cost, yet the markup remains disproportionate to both the effort and ingredient expense. A restaurant buying oranges wholesale can juice enough fruit for roughly two to three dollars to fill a glass they’ll charge eight or nine dollars for.
The markup here rivals coffee, with restaurants applying similar multiples to cover overhead. The thing is, many establishments prepare their juice in batches during prep time rather than squeezing it to order, which means the “fresh” label becomes somewhat misleading. Some spots even use juice that’s been sitting for hours, oxidizing and losing nutritional value while still commanding that premium price point. For something that takes maybe thirty seconds of actual juicing time per serving, the cost-benefit ratio for consumers is pretty dismal.
