Food for Thought
Super Bowl Party Grocery Prices 2025 vs 2026: What’s Up, What’s Down, and How Seattle, Boston, and Santa Clara Compare
Feb 04, 2026
Every year, the Super Bowl doubles as one of the biggest food events in the U.S. Shopping baskets are filled with wings, chips, pizza, dips, and drinks - but the expense of that trip is under pressure at the register.
Using Datasembly’s real-time, hyper-local pricing data from some of the nation’s largest retailers, we analyzed the best available prices of Super Bowl party staples across leading national brands such as PepsiCo, Campbell’s, Kraft Heinz, and Tyson. With the recent announcement from PepsiCo you can bet the competition will be fierce.
We compared national prices from 2025 to 2026 and then analyzed how pricing changed in three key markets tied to this year’s game: Seattle, Boston, and Santa Clara.
Here’s what the latest data shows.
At the end of last year costs were beginning to increase in certain categories, while others had decreased steadily. Here’s what we found based on the most popular items in the Super Bowl basket:
The truth is that to understand the changes you need to understand the item level. Small increases across several categories are outweighing decreases in a handful of items.
Key items in the basket are actually declining in prices and provide relief to the overall selection, especially in high-volume snacks and appetizer categories.
The sharp rise in queso stands out as the single biggest inflation driver in the basket. But other categories too, like Beverages, are also on the rise. This follows our Grocery Price Index where we’ve seen increases from December moving into January.
This creates a familiar retail dynamic and challenge for retailers and brands: shoppers will notice the items that jump the most, even if several others quietly get cheaper.
The local view of market from 2025 vs. 2026 is where consumers are won and lost and in our three key markets, retailers and brands are working hard to win. In all locations, our basket prices are actually less expensive than last year. Who's got the best prices? Take a look.
Our Boston basket is running –4.0% less than what was seen in 2025 and skews toward higher protein and beverage inflation, with relief coming from snack items.
The Seattle basket is showing even greater savings at –8.4% less than what was seen in 2025 with meaningful reductions in sides and chili, but steeper increases in wings and beverages.
Everyone is winning in Santa Clara where our Super Bowl basket is –16.6% cheaper what was seen last year with the strongest deltas in potato-based items and beverages, helping counter the increases in chili and burgers.
The updated data shows that Super Bowl party prices at the national level in 2026 are just slightly more than in 2025, but the local levels are where the battles are being won. Savings in potatoes, chips, and wings help counter notable inflation in dips, queso, and beverages.
For retailers and brands, success this season hinges on understanding which items matter most to shoppers and how to position those locally.