If you’re like me and eat nothing but whole foods prepared at home and shop around at bargain/ethnic markets, the costs are down right ridiculous. Most weekly vegetable and fruit stock ups are under $30/week. When I was unemployed I was eating like a king for less than $300 a month with at least a half pound serving of meat each day. Most of the budget went to meat and avocados.
It takes a lot of experience to balance that with time though. It took me many years to discover techniques like sous vide that are fire and forget, and build up a stable of recipes like the Thai curry where the ingredients can be prepped while cooking to cut down on prep time. It used to be very time consuming but the rewards are worth it.
Uh what? Top sirloin is $15ish per pound where I live, with ribeye more like $20/pound. You are getting some insanely cheap steak if you can get it at favorable prices compared to McDonald's.
I can't remember the last time I saw USDA Prime top sirloin and have no idea what it would cost. $10/lb for USDA Prime anything seems low to me too, but beef prices may have gone up since OP remembers.
Nope, that's from a Southern California Costco in a high cost of living area and I last bought Prime top sirloin steaks two weeks ago. They're sometimes even cheaper with the USDA Select going for $7-8/lb and Prime for $8-9/lb. The Costco USDA Prime ribeyes are more expensive ($20/lb for steaks, $25/lb for rounds) so I only buy them for special occasions.
The cheaper (and lower quality) ribeyes I usually buy are from a halal market that's in the next city over. They're not USDA graded but you can look at the current weekly ad [1], which has ribeye roasts for $4.49/lb. They usually have steaks for $5-6/lb so you don't have to cut up the roast yourself. They even had $6-7/lb t-bone steaks a few weeks ago
For that $10 McDonalds meal you can even upgrade to their $9.99/lb beef tenderloin, which gives you eazy 8oz fillet mignons for $10 a piece (plus 8oz of leftover scraps for a braise or soup).
I see a lot of ethnic stores selling meats and vegetables at essentially wholesale prices - or lower! - too. I sometimes wonder about how that works. It's not economy of scale.
I asked the owner of the Halal market and they explained that there are several factors going on:
When they buy meat, they write long-ish term contracts with small meat suppliers, who then give them deals on the high demand stuff if they take the low demand stuff off their hands. It allows the suppliers to plan in advanced much better since most of a cow will be sold to one place and gives them consistent revenue for years at a time. Since these supermarkets serve demographics that are used to buying organ meats, tripe, and other cuts undesirable to Americans, they get much better deals on everything else. Some other cuts that are in high demand like oxtail aren't that much cheaper at the Halal market because there's only so much oxtail on a cow.
He also said that the turnover in the store is much faster than in bigger markets like Ranch 99 or HMart, so they can afford to keep prices low by avoiding spoilage. They are also much more seasonal which aligns with their customer expectations so unlike Ralphs or Costco, they don't waste money on expensive meat or produce just so that they can have it consistently year round.