A historic cattle shortage has pushed wholesale beef to record levels, slaughtering steakhouses from Texas barbecue institutions to high-end Midwest chains—though lower-cost players like Texas Roadhouse and Outback Steakhouse are growing through the squeeze.
Steaks with thyme.
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Steak prices spiked 17% to $13.02 per pound in one year, and ground beef hit a record $6.90 per pound, up 19% from the year prior, according to April data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The U.S. cattle herd has fallen to a 75-year low, according to the Texas Farm Bureau, driven by drought, labor shortages, dwindling ranch land and high operational costs.
Wholesale brisket in Texas is up roughly 28% year-over-year, with Houston-based Roegels Barbecue Co. now paying $5.56 per pound and raising its menu brisket price 6% to $35 per pound, according to The Washington Post.
Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin, Texas, also raised brisket prices to $38 per pound and may soon restrict sales of it to one day a week, per the Post.
Texas barbecue closures this year include Brett's BBQ Shop, Kirby's BBQ, Sabar BBQ, Wright on Taco & BBQ and Sweetie Pie's Ribeyes, according to The Washington Post.
In the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, 801 Chophouse's Chapter 11 bankruptcy announced in April hit eight restaurants from Virginia to Colorado.
Not every steak operator is in distress: Bloomin' Brands, the owner of Outback Steakhouse, beat earnings estimates on May 6 with adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.67 versus a $0.58 estimate on revenue of $1.0597 billion, sending shares up 40% in one day. Texas Roadhouse posted 12.8% revenue growth past $1.6 billion on 7.1% same-store sales and 4.5% traffic growth, with chief financial officer Michael Bailen saying that consumers have been shifting to cheaper value menu items including pork, chicken and lower-cost beef cuts—a strategy higher-end restaurants aren’t able to easily replicate.
While beef prices continue to rise, popular protein-heavy diets—even backed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s revised federal dietary guidelines centering red meat—are pushing consumption up, creating a supply-demand mismatch. Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn told the Washington Post that brisket joints kept prices "artificially low" for years but can no longer hide rising labor costs—along with inflation hikes affecting packaging and side-dishes—making $40 per pound brisket "now not a crazy number to see on a menu."
The Trump administration has tried to engineer relief on the supply side, with limited traction. The White House paused two executive orders Trump was expected to sign aimed at bringing down record beef prices and rebuilding the U.S. cattle herd earlier this month—the latest stumble in the administration's effort to blunt grocery inflation ahead of November's midterms. One order would temporarily suspend the tariff-rate quota across all beef-exporting nations, allowing more beef in at low rates, according to The Wall Street Journal. Another would expand rancher loans and roll back endangered wolf protections and cattle ear tag rules. Trump began fixating on beef prices last fall, proposing in October 2025 to increase Argentine beef imports, drawing pushback from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and Republican senators from cattle states. In February, he signed the "Ensuring Affordable Beef for the American Consumer" proclamation, temporarily quadrupling tariff-free Argentine beef. The delayed orders would have expanded that to all beef-exporting nations.
In addition to the other Texas barbecue closings this year, even Texas Monthly's No. 1 barbecue joint, Ernest Servantes' Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin is in “survival mode,” according to the Post. "There's always been price increases, but there's always been relief and it's gone down," Servantes, 47, told the Post. "Now we don't see any end in sight, and it's going to get scary here."
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