Anatomy of a cheeseburger and fries: How inflation has pushed up the cost of this very American meal

We examined the cost of each ingredient in The Mighty Colorado’s cheeseburger.

A cheeseburger from the Mighty Colorado Burger inside Denver Beer Co. in Olde Town Arvada on March 28, 2023. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

Long gone are the days when a burger cost less than $10.

When James Samara and Brendan McManus opened The Mighty Colorado Burger inside Denver Beer Co.’s Arvada location in 2017, a basic cheeseburger with fries cost $9. Now, the combo is $12, which Samara said is to make up for higher employee wages, food and distribution costs.

The entire restaurant industry has been struggling to keep up under a pile of economic issues since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, including supply chain issues, labor shortages, the rising cost of minimum wage and an increase in the price of ingredients.

“It’s the perfect storm,” Samara said. “We’re paying our staff much more, and their cost of living is higher, and we’re spending much more on our ingredients, so unfortunately it just has to get passed on to the customer at some point.”