With tariffs swinging markets from highs to lows in the span of hours, it helps to look at other indicators to gauge the state of our economy: home sales, the average weekly hours for manufacturing employees, how many dolls a little girl is allowed to get for Christmas. Me? I’m watching pizza sales.

For the longest time, pizza has been the go-to dinner order for anyone looking to feed a family fast and on the cheap. What’s often touted as America’s favorite food took on another attribute during the pandemic: safe. Domino’s Pizza Inc., the largest of the delivery chains, and its smaller rival Papa John’s International Inc. each registered double-digit year-over-year same-store sales increases in the US and North America, respectively, in 2020, helped by Covid-19 lockdowns. Pizza Hut finally saw that kind of lift in the first quarter of 2021, by which time inflation had started to bubble up, enhancing the value proposition. In an earnings call that quarter, David Gibbs, chief executive officer of parent Yum! Brands Inc., chalked up the success to several factors, including the “compelling value” of Pizza Hut’s $10 Tastemaker offer—a large pie with any three toppings.

Four years on, though, it looks as if low-income consumers are being priced out of pizza. Those same-store sales were down at all three pizza chains in the first quarter of 2025, declining 5% at Pizza Hut, 2.7% at Papa John’s and 0.5% at Domino’s. Domino’s did have one metric to celebrate, at least: Takeout ticked up 1%, because, as Chief Financial Officer Sandeep Reddy explained in an earnings call, it costs less than delivery.

Certainly part of pizza’s problem is the proliferation of takeout options made possible by the relentless expansion of delivery services such as Grubhub Inc. and Uber Eats. Also, people have been gravitating toward healthier options generally, which could be denting sales at the chains. But the biggest factor for price-sensitive, low-income consumers—the people who account for so many of the sales at pizza chains—is that the value proposition just isn’t there the way it once was. The average price of a large pizza at the top five chains is now $18.14, and the overall check has jumped nearly 30% since 2019, according to Richard Shank, an analyst at market research firm Technomic. That’s slightly higher than the increases at burger and chicken chains.

Pizza is getting more expensive everywhere, partly because the costs of essential ingredients like tomato paste, as Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute says, have been going up. But that hasn’t dampened appetites for a certain cohort of Americans. Pizzerias where the average meal costs $31 to $50 per person saw a 43% increase in the number of diners in the first three months of 2025 from the previous year, according to data from the restaurant reservations app OpenTable.

As Moody’s Analytics pointed out in a report published earlier this year, the top 10% of US households now account for half of all consumer spending—the highest in data going back to 1989. These folks, whose sense of financial security has been bolstered by rising home prices and stock market gains, are the top leg of our “K-shaped economy,” as Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Michael Halen describes it. On the other end are low-income consumers, whose purchasing power has been decimated by the crisis of a higher cost of living without a comparable increase in wealth.

The chains know they need to offer their inflation-fatigued customers more lower-priced options to spur sales. Domino’s expects its loyalty program, revamped in 2023 to better serve takeout customers, to get “light users” coming in more frequently, Reddy said in the recent earnings call. Papa John’s is pushing its Papa Pairings, a value menu offering two or more items for $6.99 each. Pizza Hut has a $7 Deal Lover’s menu and a discounted carry-out, large, single-topping pizza for $9.99—but most of its large pizzas cost at least double that.

The supermarket tells a similar story. Look at Nestlé SA, which at an investor presentation earlier this year called the category one of its “underperformers” and largely blamed overly aggressive pricing. In response, the company brought 95% of its frozen pizza portfolio—which includes brands like Tombstone, Jack’s and DiGiorno—back down into the $4-$6 range. A few months later, though, the company launched its more expensive alternative: DiGiorno Wood Fired Style Crust Pizza for $6.49. “The new launch capitalizes on the continued trend toward premiumization across the category,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg Businessweek.

Yet in a sign of just how little some consumers will spend, of the top 20 brands, the one posting the biggest gains, in both dollars and units, was Tony’s Pizza, which sells pies for four for $4 or less, according to data from market researcher Circana LLC for the 52 weeks ended April 20.

Still, there are signs that the general economic uncertainty could be taking a toll on the wealthy, as well. There has also been an increase in homemade pizza making, according to Circana analyst David Portalatin, even though on average, refrigerated pies and pizza kits cost more than the frozen kind. But prices in that category are down per unit by nearly 19% in that period, according to Circana.

Among independent pizzerias, the once ubiquitous dollar slice is becoming elusive, but for the restaurants that cater to consumers in the top leg of the K, things are still looking up. Slices and pies are more expensive than they once were, but customers understand they’re paying a higher price for a better product often made with imported flours, tomatoes and cheeses, says Scott Wiener, who’s been leading pizza tours of New York City for more than 15 years. At Lucia on New York City’s Upper East Side, pies range from $29 for a plain one to $58 for a vodka pepperoni Sicilian.

All of that gently ground flour and buffalo mozzarella straight from Italy are right in the trade war’s line of fire, says Fred Mortati, the proprietor of high-end pizza ingredient importer Orlando Foods. Between President Donald Trump’s 10% global tariff and the subsequent weakening of the US dollar, Mortati says his costs “increased effectively overnight by 20%.” He says he has no choice but to pass the increases along to his customers. Mortati expects pizza shops to raise their prices from 2% to 5% based on food costs alone, and he’s not sure everyone will be so understanding. “Consumers are tired of seeing inflationary pressure, unfortunately,” he says.