How Meals Prices Works

We identify restaurants to add based on national presence, consumer interest, and data availability. Before a restaurant goes live on Meals Prices, we conduct a comprehensive baseline audit — collecting every menu item, price, calorie count, and allergen detail from official sources.

Baseline prices are verified against at least three independent sources: the restaurant's official website, their mobile app, and a third-party confirmation. Only items with verified pricing go into our database. Prices with high regional variation are flagged for broader sampling.

Our price monitoring system runs daily checks across restaurant digital channels. When pricing signals indicate a change — typically a ±2% or greater movement — our system flags the item for review and queues an update. This ensures our data reflects market conditions without manual intervention for every change.

Users at locations across the country submit real-world price observations through our review system. Each submission captures the price seen, the location, and the date. Multiple corroborating reports from different users trigger automatic flagging for review. Single reports are noted but require additional confirmation before updating our database.

Price changes above 5% or affecting popular items trigger an editorial review. Our team cross-references the change against industry news, known commodity cost movements, and broader pricing trends before approving an update. This prevents erroneous data from reaching users during periods of unusual volatility.

Verified updates go live with a new "Last Updated" timestamp. Every page on Meals Prices displays when its data was last reviewed. Historical price data is preserved in our price history database, creating the long-term trend data visible on each restaurant's page.