Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

The Great Brisket Crisis of 2014

Arby’s Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich has launched a brisket crisis. Credit: Arby’s.

Guard your briskets!

Brisket prices are skyrocketing nationwide as voracious demand for a “limited edition” Arby’s brisket sandwich eats into supply for the prized cut of meat.

Fueled by a hugely successful online marketing campaign, the fast-food giant is consuming more than a half-million pounds of brisket every week to keep up with its 3,300 stores demand for the “Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich,” whose schtick is that it smokes for thirteen hours.

At Jewish-themed restaurants around New York, brisket already commands premium prices. At the tourist-friendly Carnegie Deli, a brisket sandwich will set you back $17.99. Mile End’s smoked-meat sandwich, made of seasoned and marinated brisket, is a relative bargain at $15. A brisket sandwich at Katz’s Deli — albeit perfectly cooked and stacked sky-high — clocks in at $17.45. Owner Jake Dell says he’s eating the cost of the brisket shortage on the back end. “I can’t change my prices every week. Prices are only going one way and it’s clearly not down,” Dell told the Forward.

According to Texas Monthly’s barbecue-fanatic site TMBBQ, the sandwich went viral after Arby’s posted a record-breaking, Warhol-esque, 13-hour “commercial” that showcased the smoking process for a single piece of meat in real time. Though the spot aired on just one old-school television station — in Duluth, Minnesota — word spread about the video online, and the bonkers reaction included serious coverage from The New York Times to Mashable to Eater.

Almost singlehandedly, TMBBQ reports, Arby’s has pushed brisket prices from roughly $2.50 per pound in early March 2014 to $3.15 per pound by mid-April. Now, foodies are fearing a possible shortage of raw brisket in a meat market that’s already depleted; while the popularity of BBQ — and deli — keeps growing, the US cattle population has reached record low levels, TMBBQ says.

Grubstreet puts the brisket boondoggle in perspective this week: “The cut of beef is more popular than ever, but of course there are only two per cow, which is why price has jumped 44 percent since last year,” the site reports. One “estimate on the chain’s impact is sobering: If you figure 281,736 pounds per week, plus a ‘conservative’ 43.2 percent product loss, it comes to around 3,000 head of cattle every single day, a period during which only 60,000 produce brisket.

“So, that sandwich? It’s using about 5 percent of America’s entire supply, which almost certainly will affect your local barbecue establishment at a time when cattle production is unnaturally low.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.