How we price family meals
Every price here comes from the restaurant’s own menu or ordering page, with the date we read it and the store it applies to. We don’t use delivery-app prices (they run higher) or menu-price websites (they’re rarely dated, and often wrong).
The price a person
We price enough of a meal to feed everyone you’re feeding, using the most people the restaurant says it feeds, then divide by your headcount. A “Meal for 2” counts twice for a family of four. Prices are before tax; Birmingham’s sales tax is 10%.
When a restaurant doesn’t say how many it feeds
Pizza chains and some BBQ joints don’t. For those we use simple serving rules and label the result Our serving estimate everywhere it shows. Tap “Their serving counts only” to hide them.
- A medium pizza feeds 2; a large feeds 3.
- Meat by the pound: ¼ lb a person.
- Tacos: 3 a person. Mixed taco-and-burrito packs: 2 items a person.
The two comparisons
| Benchmark | How we got it | A person |
|---|---|---|
| Cook it yourself | USDA’s moderate-cost food plan for a family of four (two adults, kids 6 to 11) is $320.50 a week in September 2026. Spread over 21 meals and 4 people, that’s $3.82 a person per meal, cooked from scratch at home. | $3.82 |
| Store dinner | Walmart Hoover (Hwy 280), Nov 1, 2026: rotisserie chicken (2.25 lb) $5.97, Caesar salad kit $3.58, potato salad (16 oz) $4.27, French bread loaf $1.47. $15.29 for four before tax. (Yes, it lands on the same $3.82 as cooking from scratch.) | $3.82 |
Very few restaurant family meals beat either one. What you buy is the night off: no shopping, cooking or dishes. We show the gap in dollars so you can decide if it’s worth it tonight.
Places we couldn’t price yet
Popeyes, KFC, Chick-fil-A, Zaxby’s, Bojangles, Church’s Texas Chicken, Jack’s, Captain D’s, Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q, Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe, Waldo’s Chicken & Beer, Outback Steakhouse, Cracker Barrel, Olive Garden, P.F. Chang’s, Little Caesars, Taco Mama, Moe’s Original BBQ and Cicis Pizza.
Their family meals are real, but the price sits inside an ordering app, or the menu doesn’t print one. We list them without a price instead of guessing, and fill them in from restaurants that post their prices with us and from parents who tell us what they paid.
Keeping it fresh
- Every price shows the date we last checked it.
- A price nobody has confirmed in 45 days gets a “Needs a check” label, and after 75 days we hide it until it’s checked again.
- Any parent can tap “Yes” or “No, it was…” on a meal. A “No” sends it back for a check, never straight onto the page.
- Restaurants can post or correct their own family meal prices, free, from the For restaurants page.
We use software, including AI tools, to read restaurant menus. Every price links to the page it came from, with the date we read it.