27 August 2026· ≈ 2 min read· figures updated 10 October 2026 (release 2026.10.10-monthly-bulletin)
Two indices, two different realities. Eating out gets more expensive faster than everything else.
In this article
Headline CPI vs food-service CPI
Headline CPI measures a basket of everything: food, energy, housing, clothing, services. The "Restaurants and cafes" class (CP11.1.1 at Eurostat) isolates eating out.
The two series do not move together. Food service is labour and rent heavy, and neither of those falls often.
The gyro premium
Gyronomics measures that gap explicitly. From 1998 to 2011 food-service CPI rose on average about 0.9 of a percentage point a year faster than headline CPI.
The gyro price ran faster still: roughly 3.7 points a year above headline CPI over the same years. That is the gyro premium, and it outpaces even food service.
That premium explains why deflating gyro prices with headline inflation alone lands well below the price you actually pay today.
The three scenarios
So we show three scenarios: implied price (headline CPI plus premium), headline CPI only, and food-service CPI. From 2019 onward documented real prices take over.
This makes it visible how much of the change is general inflation and how much is specific to eating out.
See the same numbers live in the interactive dashboard.
The figures in this article are not written by hand: they are computed from the data series and change when it does. Price and wage coverage: price collection of September 2026, catering CPI to August 2026, minimum wage in force since 1 April 2026. Dataset version 2026.10.10-monthly-bulletin, last updated 2026-10-10.