Pizza got expensive because ingredients, labor, and overhead costs all jumped at the same time. Prices are up more than 15% in the last five years, driven by rising dairy and meat costs, higher wages, and utility bills that climbed 10.8% in 2025 alone. Delivery fees from third-party apps pile on even more, which is why 35% of customers now order less often than they used to.
How Much Have Pizza Prices Actually Gone Up?
Pizza prices have climbed more than 15% in the last five years across the country. The national average now sits at close to $18 per pizza according to industry data. That lines up with a wider pattern in restaurants: food-away-from-home prices rose 4.1% in 2025 alone. If your usual Friday night order stings more than it used to, you are reading the receipt correctly.
The cost pressure comes from every direction at once. Tomato prices have gone up 31% since 2007. Utility gas for commercial pizza ovens spiked 10.8% in 2025. Mozzarella makes up close to half of a pizza’s raw ingredient cost, and wholesale dairy prices keep climbing right alongside it. Stack on pizza boxes, napkins, cleaning supplies, and delivery costs, all more expensive than three years ago. Wages are higher across the restaurant industry. Commercial rents in cities like San Antonio keep rising. Every single line item moved up at the same time.
Customers feel it. Thirty-five percent of consumers now say they order restaurant pizza less often specifically because of price. Here in San Antonio, we hear it at the counter every single week. Families still want pizza night, but they are paying much closer attention to where that money goes and whether the shop they pick is actually putting quality ingredients on the plate or just charging more for the same shortcuts they were running five years ago. That shift in how people spend is not going away.
What Makes a Pizza Expensive to Produce
Every ingredient on a pizza costs more than it did a few years ago. Mozzarella cheese alone makes up close to half the raw material cost of a single pie. That’s a big number. When cheese prices climb, every pizza on the menu gets more expensive. Add in pepperoni and sausage, and the ingredient bill moves before a shop even fires up the oven.
Then there’s everything that never shows up on your plate. Tomato prices have climbed 31% since 2007, which hits sauce costs across the board. Pizza boxes, napkins, cleaning supplies, and packaging all cost more than they did a couple of years back. Utility gas service jumped 10.8% in 2025, and when you’re running commercial ovens twelve hours straight, that increase lands hard on the monthly bill. Commercial rent in San Antonio keeps climbing too. None of these costs appear on a menu, but every one of them shapes what a pizza shop has to charge just to break even.
Labor rounds out the picture. Wages across the restaurant industry have gone up, and honestly, they needed to. Good pizza takes people who know dough, know timing, and know how to build a consistent product hundreds of times a shift. But when you combine higher pay with rising ingredient costs and overhead that won’t stop climbing, the math to produce one pizza looks very different than it did three years ago. Same recipe. Same toppings. Same oven. The cost to make it all come together just isn’t what it used to be.
Why Delivery Costs Keep Climbing
Delivery costs keep climbing because every part of getting a pizza from oven to door has gotten more expensive at once. Fuel, commercial vehicle insurance, driver wages, and the corrugated boxes we stack orders in all cost more than they did two or three years ago. That adds up fast. Third-party delivery platforms then layer in their own separate service fees, platform charges, and driver compensation on top of the shop’s costs, and every one of those charges lands directly on what you pay at checkout.
For a shop like ours here in San Antonio, the math on delivery comes down to either running a full driver fleet with fuel cards, maintenance, and commercial insurance, or partnering with a platform like DoorDash to handle the logistics. We deliver through DoorDash within nine miles of our Highway 151 location. That keeps us from carrying fleet overhead, but the platform takes its percentage from every order to cover drivers, technology, and support. Utility gas service alone climbed 10.8% in 2025, and that increase hits every delivery run no matter who is behind the wheel.
That sticker shock is why about 35% of customers nationwide now say they order restaurant pizza less often. But you don’t have to stop ordering. Pickup changes the whole equation. When you order ahead online and swing by the shop, you skip every delivery-related surcharge, every app fee, every service charge that gets tacked on. Your total goes back to reflecting what the pizza actually costs to make rather than what it costs to move across town. If delivery fees are the part driving your bill up, ordering ahead for pickup is the simplest fix.
The Hidden Costs You Never See on the Menu
The pizza you order carries costs that never appear as a line item. They add up fast. Before a single pie hits the oven, a shop has already paid commercial rent, liability insurance, health permits, pest control, grease trap service, and equipment repairs. An oven that goes down on a Saturday night means an emergency repair call that can wipe out a full day’s revenue. Those fixed expenses land on every pizza whether the shop sells fifty pies that night or five hundred.
Utilities hit hard, too. Utility gas service increased 10.8% in 2025, and a pizza oven runs from open to close every single day. Commercial ovens burn through gas at a rate most customers would not believe. Electricity keeps the walk-in coolers cold, powers the hood ventilation, and lights the building for twelve or more hours straight. Then there are the supplies you handle every time you pick up an order but never think twice about: pizza boxes, wax paper, napkins, to-go bags, cleaning chemicals. Every one of those items costs more than it did two years ago.
Labor rounds out the picture. Cooks, prep workers, dishwashers, and the person taking your order at the counter all factor into every pie. Wage increases across the country have pushed staffing costs higher at every restaurant. A packed Friday night might need eight people on the clock. A dead Tuesday still needs four. That payroll does not shrink just because foot traffic does. Stack rent, gas, electric, supplies, insurance, and wages on top of each other, and the real cost of putting a pizza in front of you goes far beyond flour, cheese, and sauce.
How to Get the Most Pizza for Your Money
Knowing where pizza costs pile up helps you dodge the biggest markups. Two moves make the most difference. Skip third-party delivery apps and pick up your order instead, which cuts delivery fees, service charges, and the expected tip that gets tacked on at checkout. Then go with a specialty pizza that already comes loaded with toppings rather than building a custom pie where every addition bumps the price.
Size matters more than most people realize. A large pizza gives you significantly more food per dollar than ordering two mediums, even when the bigger box looks like a bigger expense up front. At Godfather’s, our Classic Combo, Hot Stuff, Super Taco, and Humble Pie all come stacked with toppings already built in. You pick the flavor profile you want, and you are not paying for each topping one at a time. That is how a specialty pie saves you money compared to adding toppings individually on a plain cheese base, where every click at checkout adds another charge.
Call us directly instead of ordering through an app. Third-party platforms charge the restaurant a percentage on every sale, and those costs end up as higher menu prices on the app compared to what you would pay if you ordered directly from the shop. When you call Godfather’s at 210-750-2222, ask about current deals. We run specials regularly. With 35 years feeding San Antonio families, we know how to put together orders that fill the table without emptying the wallet. Pickup is always the simplest way to keep more of your money where it belongs.
Why a Local Shop Costs What It Costs
A local pizza shop pays the same wholesale prices for cheese and flour that every chain does, but without the volume discounts. Chains lock in contracts across thousands of locations. A single shop buys week to week at whatever the distributor charges. When utility gas service climbs 10.8% in one year, a local kitchen absorbs that full hit with no corporate cushion.
The tradeoff is a different product. A chain stretches every ingredient across a formula designed to hit a price point and protect margins. A local shop picks its own toppings, sources its own cheese, rolls dough fresh, and builds each pizza the way the owner wants to eat it rather than the way a corporate formula says to build it. That costs more per pie. It also means the food was made by someone who chose every component on purpose. Food-away-from-home prices climbed 4.1% in 2025. Every restaurant raised prices. The real question is where those dollars landed.
At Godfather’s, those dollars go into the food. Real mozzarella. Dough made fresh on the northeast side of San Antonio, not shipped frozen from a warehouse. A kitchen run by people who have been at this long enough to know exactly what corners they refuse to cut. The pizza costs what it costs because every ingredient earns its spot on the pie, not because a corporate spreadsheet said to raise the number. Around 35% of consumers now say they order restaurant pizza less often because of price. The regulars at Godfather’s keep showing up. They can taste where their money went.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why is pizza so expensive now in the US?
Pizza prices across the US have climbed more than 15% in the last five years. The average price of a pizza in the US is close to $18. Food-away-from-home prices increased 4.1% in 2025 alone. Every input costs more. Cheese, flour, meats, even the boxes your pizza comes in. Labor costs have risen across the restaurant industry, and utility gas service increased 10.8% in 2025. Those cost increases hit every pizza shop in the country, from national chains to local spots like ours in San Antonio.
Why are so many people online frustrated about pizza prices?
The frustration is real. About 35% of consumers say they’re ordering restaurant pizza less often because of price. When you remember what the same order cost three or four years ago, the jump is hard to ignore. Pizza prices have gone up more than 15% in the last five years, and that adds up fast for families ordering every week. The costs went up for pizza shops too. Ingredients, labor, utilities, packaging, all of it climbed. What you’re paying more for at the counter, we’re paying more for behind it.
Why does a specialty pizza cost so much more than a plain cheese pizza?
Every topping adds cost. Premium meats like Italian sausage and pepperoni have seen some of the steepest price increases in the food supply chain. Fresh vegetables need daily prep, which adds labor time. Specialty cheeses run higher than standard mozzarella. When a pizza has seven or eight toppings, like our Classic Combo, those ingredient costs stack fast. A plain cheese pizza uses flour, sauce, and mozzarella. A loaded specialty uses all of that plus five to eight more ingredients, each with its own wholesale price that keeps climbing.
Why have pizza delivery fees gone up so much?
Delivery used to be a perk that shops offered to drive more orders. Now it’s a real cost center. Gas prices hit every delivery run. Insurance for drivers has climbed. Third-party delivery apps take a cut of each order, which pushes shops to raise delivery fees, menu prices, or both. Many restaurants now add separate delivery surcharges to cover those costs without inflating dine-in prices. Ordering direct from a local shop instead of through an app usually saves you money, because the shop isn’t paying a middleman fee on your order.
Will pizza prices go back down anytime soon?
Probably not to where they were a few years ago. Food-away-from-home prices increased 4.1% in 2025, and the costs driving those increases haven’t reversed. Flour, cheese, and meats cost more at wholesale. Utility gas service increased 10.8% in 2025. Labor costs aren’t dropping either. Some shops absorb what they can and find ways to run leaner, but the baseline cost of making a pizza is permanently higher than it was before the pandemic. The most realistic outcome is that the rate of increase slows down, not that prices actually fall back.