Mardi Gras Day 2027·130 days to go

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The Carnival Index

Like the Big Mac index, but with po-boys and beignets: what a few New Orleans staples cost over the years. Every price is tied to a menu or a dated source, and the gaps are marked.

Basket vs. inflation

Price change since our first sourced price, against U.S. inflation over the same months.

From Mar 2015 to Aug 2026: Mardi Gras basket +46%, restaurant prices +57%, all prices +42%.

+0%+10%+20%+30%+40%+50%+60%Mar 2015201620182020202220242026+57%+46%+42%

A first sketch: the basket line rests on 1 to 5 sourced items, depending on the period, and will sharpen as more prices come in.

  • Mardi Gras basket
  • Restaurant prices (US)
  • All prices (US)
Show the numbers and how we calculate it
MonthMardi Gras basketRestaurant prices (US)All prices (US)
Mar 2016+7%+3%+1%
Mar 2017+14%+5%+3%
Mar 2018+15%+8%+6%
Mar 2019+18%+11%+8%
Mar 2020+21%+14%+9%
Mar 2021+23%+18%+12%
Mar 2022+26%+27%+22%
Mar 2023+30%+38%+28%
Mar 2024+35%+43%+32%
Mar 2025+41%+49%+35%
Mar 2026+45%+55%+40%
Aug 2026+46%+57%+42%

How it works: between two sourced prices of an item we assume steady monthly growth. Each month the basket moves by the average growth of the items with a sourced price on both sides of that month, and those moves are chained into one line starting at 0%. National figures are the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, set to 0% in the same month.

Items in the basket line: 1 from Apr 2015 to Oct 2015; 2 from Nov 2015 to Jul 2021; 3 from Aug 2021 to Oct 2022; 2 from Nov 2022 to Nov 2022; 4 from Dec 2022 to Feb 2023; 5 from Mar 2023 to Dec 2025; 4 from Jan 2026 to Jan 2026; 3 from Feb 2026 to Jun 2026; 1 from Jul 2026 to Aug 2026. Early on, the line rests on very few prices, so read it as a first sketch that sharpens as visitors add reports.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), U.S. city average (CUUR0000SEFV, CUUR0000SA0; data pulled 2026-10-01).

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published no figure for Oct 2025. We draw a straight line between the months on either side.

The basket

Pat O'Brien's

Hurricane

4 oz rum plus 4 oz mix; the souvenir glass is extra

+9% from Jul 31, 2021 to Dec 6, 2025.

Parkway Bakery & Tavern

Fried shrimp po-boy

Large, wild-caught Gulf shrimp

What we could not find

  • Hurricane prices before 2021: the Pat O'Brien's menus we could find date from 2021 on, and earlier archived pages show no prices.
  • King cake over time at other bakeries: Gambino's and Haydel's archived prices are shipped packages in changing sizes, and Randazzo's old pages show no prices.
  • A New Orleans restaurant-price index: the BLS publishes no metro series for it, so the chart compares against national U.S. prices instead.

Prices are menu prices before sales tax unless the source says otherwise. Older figures come from archived menus on the Internet Archive; two Sazerac prices come from visitor blog posts and are marked as such.

Report a price you paid

Grabbed a Hurricane or a po-boy? Tell us the price. We check each report before it counts, and publish a median only once enough people have reported the same item.

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