Why Is Airport Food So Expensive? The Real Reasons

The Short Answer: It’s the Lease, Not Just the Location

The line everyone repeats is “captive audience.” It’s true, but it’s lazy. A captive audience explains why the airport can charge more. It doesn’t explain the machinery that makes a $14 burger the default instead of the exception.

In my years in revenue management at Virgin America, the thing that actually drives terminal prices is boring: the lease. Airport food vendors don’t rent a storefront the way a deli on Main Street does. They win the space in a bidding war, then pay the airport a guaranteed minimum plus a cut of every sale. That structure gets priced straight into your sandwich.

Stick around, because once you see how the money moves, the workarounds get obvious — and I’ll end with the ones that actually work, not “pack a granola bar and hope.”

Who Actually Sets Airport Food Prices

Short version: not the restaurant. The airport authority sets the financial terms, and the vendor decides whether the math still works after those terms are paid.

It helps to know how big this business is. Airport concessions — food, drink, and retail — can make up as much as 60% of a US airport’s total revenue, according to The Hustle, which quotes Embry-Riddle airport-marketing professor Blaise Waguespack: “In terms of dollars, airport parking is #1 but concessions run a close second… It’s a huge business.” He’s right about parking, too. ACI figures put airports’ non-aeronautical revenue globally around $73 billion in 2024, with car parking alone at roughly 43% of the North American total. The sandwich isn’t even the biggest hustle at the airport.

The RFP Process: Vendors Bid for Space, They Don’t Just Rent It

To get behind the checkpoint, a vendor answers a formal Request for Proposal — an RFP — and competes against other operators. There’s no walking in and negotiating rent with a landlord, per The Hustle.

The numbers on those bids are the part most travelers never see. A 2018 SFO Request for Proposal for nine retail openings listed a Minimum Annual Guarantee of between $365,000 and $630,000 per year, each on a 10-year commitment, according to The Hustle. That’s the floor a vendor pledges before selling a single coffee — and they sign up for a decade of it.

Minimum Annual Guarantees and Percentage-of-Sales Rent

A Minimum Annual Guarantee, or MAG, is exactly what it sounds like: a base payment the vendor promises the airport whether business is good or not. On top of it — or instead of it, whichever comes out higher — the airport takes a percentage of gross sales.

Portland is a clean example. According to The Parking Spot, PDX lease terms require a minimum of $80 per square foot per year or a 10-18% commission on sales, whichever is greater. Average Class A commercial rent in the Portland area? $30.39 per square foot. Airport rent runs more than double the street rate, with no cap on the upside.

That’s not a Portland quirk. The 2025 ACI-NA Concessions Benchmarking Survey pegs median food-and-beverage percentage rent at 12.8% of gross sales, with MAG-plus-percentage the dominant structure in more than 75% of concession agreements, and median total rent at $135 per square foot for food space. When your rent is a fixed floor plus a share of every ticket, you don’t price for the margin you want. You price for the rent you already owe.

”Street Pricing Plus” — The Policy That’s Supposed to Cap Markups

Here’s the part almost nobody knows about: most big US airports don’t actually let vendors charge whatever they want. There’s a rule.

It’s called “street pricing plus.” The vendor’s terminal price is pegged to its own off-airport menu, plus an allowed markup. Airports adopted it partly for optics and partly to keep regulators and angry travelers off their backs. The catch is in the word “plus.”

How the Cap Works (and the Loophole in “Plus”)

The ACI-NA survey found “street pricing plus” is the dominant methodology, and of 59 valid responses, 40 — about two-thirds — cap the markup at no more than 10% over street price. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s still a markup, sanctioned in advance. Airports are supposed to police it, and the same survey found 27 of 69 responding airports audit vendor pricing once a year, with another 19 checking quarterly or semiannually — but “once a year” leaves a lot of room between audits.

And the cap can move the wrong way. In 2025, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey let vendors at LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark raise food and drink prices from “street pricing plus 10%” to “street pricing plus 15%” — on top of an existing 3% surcharge earmarked for employee benefits — even while publicly insisting its pricing policies “will be followed and enforced,” per Your Mileage May Vary. Enforced, sure. Just at a higher number than last year.

When Enforcement Slips: What Investigators Actually Found

The gap between the policy and the receipt is where it gets interesting. A Business Insider terminal-menu analysis found items priced at more than double street cost — a chocolate bar marked up 120%, a burger 46% over its downtown equivalent, per GreekReporter’s summary. At Minneapolis-St. Paul, which enforces “street pricing plus 10%,” investigators still clocked a Hudson News charging 69% more than a nearby Walgreens, a Chick-fil-A meal 16% higher, and a yogurt marked up 84%.

Orlando tells the same story. Under MCO’s 15%-cap “reasonable prices” policy, a Cox Media Group Action 9 check found travel-size toothpaste 115% over a nearby Target, large fries 39% higher than the off-airport Wendy’s, a USB-C cable roughly 150% more, and a share-size Snickers about 80% up. To be fair — and this matters — a Cinnabon roll and an Auntie Anne’s pretzel came in only about 3% above street, and a Sbarro slice was actually a dime cheaper. The lesson isn’t “every price is a scam.” It’s that the cap is a ceiling nobody’s watching closely, and it swings wildly from stand to stand.

Beyond Rent: The Other Costs Baked Into Your $14 Burger

Rent is the big one, but it’s not the whole story, and pretending it’s pure greed misses real friction.

Getting Deliveries Past Security

Every case of buns and every crate of soda behind the checkpoint had to clear security to get there. Deliveries run on restricted routes and windows, not a truck backing up to the kitchen door whenever it likes. That means smaller, more frequent drops, less room to store bulk, and more labor to move it — all of which lands in the plate price. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real.

Staffing a Business Behind a Checkpoint

Then there’s labor. Working airside isn’t like staffing a suburban café. Employees need background checks and security badging before they can start, they clear the same lines and rules you do, and getting to and from a job behind a checkpoint — including, at many airports, paying for employee parking — is its own daily cost. Turnover is high, rehiring is slow because of the clearances, and every bit of that overhead gets absorbed somewhere. Usually in the menu.

The Few Airports That Don’t Play This Game

Not every airport runs the “plus.” A handful require true street pricing — no markup at all.

Portland and Salt Lake City are the two big US airports that do it, according to Your Mileage May Vary. At SLC, coffee from Millcreek Coffee Roasters, Jimmy John’s sandwiches, even Apple products in the terminal ring up at the same price as their off-airport locations. And remember PDX’s steep $80-per-square-foot rent? The airport still forbids passing it on to you — it eats some concession yield to buy goodwill, which is exactly why locals don’t dread eating there. I get into which spots are actually worth it in my guide to Portland International’s own restaurant lineup.

This isn’t new, either. Pittsburgh pioneered the street-pricing “air mall” concept back in the early 1990s, and Fraport USA/Airmall’s contracts with the Allegheny County Airport Authority still require concessionaires to charge prices equal to or below their off-airport locations, per Your Mileage May Vary. The model works. It’s just not the one most airports chose.

Congress Is Watching, Too

This stopped being trivia and became politics. In June 2025, nine House Democrats led by Rep. Dan Goldman urged the House Appropriations Committee to direct the FTC to survey concession prices and street-pricing enforcement at major airports and stadiums, arguing that “the cost of concessions at a ballgame or an airport remains unaffordable for the average American family.” The effort — the HOTDOG Act — didn’t make it into an appropriations bill and was reintroduced in January 2026, per Rep. Goldman’s office. Whether it goes anywhere or not, it tells you the markups are loud enough that Washington noticed.

How to Actually Beat Airport Food Prices

Enough theory. Here’s what actually moves your spend, in rough order of return.

Pack Solid Snacks Through Security

TSA lets you carry solid food straight through the checkpoint — granola bars, nuts, sandwiches, whole fruit, per the CheapAir blog. What it won’t let past is liquids and gels over 3.4 ounces, which quietly rules out soup, yogurt, and most drinks. So pack solids, skip the liquids, and you’ve legally sidestepped most of the terminal menu before you’ve even left home.

Bring an Empty Bottle and Refill After Security

The single highest-margin thing an airport sells you is bottled water. Beat it by carrying an empty bottle through the checkpoint — empty is fine, the 3.4-ounce rule only applies to what’s inside it — and filling it at a fountain or bottle-refill station after security, which are increasingly common at most major terminals. Pair that with your packed snacks and your required terminal spend rounds to zero.

Use Lounge Access Instead of a Restaurant Tab

If you have a lounge-getting credit card or buy a day pass, the food and drink inside often costs less than one sit-down terminal meal — and you’re not tipping on a $14 burger. Lounges are their own rabbit hole, so I’ll keep it short: if you were going to spend $30 airside anyway, price the lounge first.

Know Which Terminal (and Airport) Is Actually Worth Eating At

The smartest move is knowing where the good, fairly priced food actually is before you’re standing hungry at the wrong end of a concourse. It varies by terminal more than people expect — see how Boston Logan’s four terminals handle food differently, or the case for turning an Atlanta layover into a food circuit instead of grazing on whatever’s nearest your gate. Just give yourself the runway to pull it off; here’s how much buffer time you actually need before your flight.

FAQ

What is the most expensive airport for food?

Honestly, there’s no clean answer, and anyone handing you a ranking is guessing. The investigative pricing checks — Business Insider, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando — show markups swing wildly from stand to stand inside the same airport, from a Sbarro slice that’s a dime cheaper than street to a yogurt marked up 84%. Your terminal and the specific vendor matter far more than the airport’s name on the sign.

Is it cheaper to buy food on the plane or at the airport?

Neither is a bargain. Onboard buy-on-board menus are limited and priced in the same captive spirit as the terminal — you’re not going to out-negotiate a flight attendant at 35,000 feet. The only route that reliably beats both is the one you control: solid snacks packed through security and a bottle you refill after the checkpoint.

Do all airports enforce street pricing?

No. Most large US airports use some “street pricing plus” cap — usually plus 10%, sometimes plus 15% — but as the investigations show, enforcement is uneven. A couple of airports, Portland and Salt Lake City, require true street pricing with no markup at all, while others, like the Port Authority’s New York-area airports, have raised their cap rather than tightened it.