Americans will spend $7.1 billion on Fourth of July food
We know that people will light up their grills for barbecues and picnics on the Fourth of July, but have you stopped to think about how much Americans will spend on the holiday?
The answer is … a lot.
According to AAA, a record 44.2 million Americans will travel 50+ miles from home for the Fourth of July. Between those travelers and people staying close to home, the National Retail Federation (NRF) reports that 65.5% will participate in a cookout. After buying all of the fixins, the average American will spend about $73.42. Overall, the NRF predicts that Americans will spend $7.1 billion on cookouts and picnics for the Fourth of July. This is up from $6.8 billion in 2016.
When it comes to what we grill, hot dogs lead the pack. The National Hot Dog and Sausage council says that Americans consume about 150 million hot dogs on the Fourth of July. For reference, that’s enough to stretch from D.C. to L.A. more than five times. Summer also marks the peak hot dog season (Memorial Day to Labor Day), where Americans consume about 7 billion hot dogs.
Hot dogs not your thing? No worries. Grillmasters handled about 190 million pounds of ground beef in 2016, costing $388 million. They spent about $389 million on chicken.
Of course, we can’t forget the sides. In 2016, Wallethub says that Americans spent about $114 million on deli salads, $83 million on watermelon and $36 million to buy corn on the cob.
To wash down your meal, nothing quite hits the spot like an ice-cold beer. Americans spent $1 billion on beer on the Fourth of July in 2015, a number likely to reoccur this year. If beer isn’t your thing, then perhaps you’ll contribute to the $568.3 million Americans spend on wine.
And finally, the Fourth of July would be incomplete without fireworks! Last year, Americans blew up an impressive 243 million pounds of fireworks. After some calculations, the American Pyrotechnic Association says that firework revenues reached $825 million in 2016. That’s a lot of money to burn.
About 800 people go to the emergency room every Fourth of July with fireworks-related injuries, so be careful out there. To play it safe, check out one of the 16,000 firework displays held in communities around the nation, or tune into the Macy’s Fireworks show, which has about 15 million viewers every year.
Brittany is a reporter at Yahoo Finance.
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