Most plans and forecasts are built in nominal dollars, the actual dollars on an invoice or a P&L. To compare across years or set realistic targets, you need real values, with inflation taken out. That means choosing an inflation index, and the headline CPI isn’t always the right one.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes thousands of Consumer Price Index series, broken down by item and by area. This free tool lets you search all of them, see each one’s history, and find the series that fits your business.
Why the right index matters
A restaurant’s costs don’t move with the overall CPI. Food, wages and rent each follow their own path, and prices in Atlanta don’t move like prices in Seattle. Deflating with an index that matches your cost base, such as food away from home in your region, gives a far truer picture of real growth than the headline number.