Lukas Walton's grandfather is Walmart founder Sam Walton.
Walton Family Foundation
Lukas Walton is the grandson of Sam Walton, the American businessman who created the Walmart empire.
After his father died in a plane crash in 2015, Lukas reportedly inherited a third of his fortune.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists Lukas as the world's 59th-richest person as of May 2024.
The Waltons are America's richest family but some of the Walmart heirs live pretty private lives.
Enter Lukas Walton, the 37-year-old grandson of Walmart and Sam's Club founder Sam Walton.
While his online presence is pretty limited, he's the richest person in the state of Illinois, runs an impact investing group called Builders Vision, and is chair of the Walton Family Foundation's environment program committee.
Here's what we know about him.
Lukas Walton is the grandson of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club.
Sam Walton founded Walmart.
Associated Press
Lukas' father, John T. Walton, was Sam's second-oldest son. In 2005, John died while piloting an ultra-light, homemade aircraft that crashed shortly after takeoff.
Lukas also inherited his father's 20% interest in Walton Enterprises, the family holding company that, together with a different family trust, owns around a 45% stake in Walmart.
The family owns just under a 50% stake in Walmart through a holding company and family trust.
Wealth-X; Scott Olson/Getty; Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Forbes lists Lukas as the 59th-richest American as of May 2024, but gave him a self-made score of one (out of 10), indicating that he inherited his fortune but is not actively increasing it.
Walmart heirs including Lukas regularly rank among America's richest people.
Lukas attended Colorado College, where he created his own major focusing on environmentally sustainable business and later studied energy efficiency and hydrological and geothermal energy in Iceland.
Walton made his own major at Colorado College, pictured here.
Sam and his wife, Helen, are said to have instilled a love for the environment in their children and grandchildren, with yearly outings to places like the Buffalo National River, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon.
Lukas is involved with the Walton Family Foundation, the family's organization that awards grants toward education, environmental protection, and the family's home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta.
The Walton Family Foundation has three core focus areas.
Lukas serves as the environment program committee chair and is also a board member of the organization. He is reported to have donated at least $150 million of his own fortune to the foundation.
Lukas is chair of the family foundation's environment program committee.
Forbes reports that between 2014 and 2018, the Walton Family Foundation donated almost $1 billion to K-12 education programs and $441 million to environmental projects. More recently, the foundation awarded $566.5 million in grants in 2022, according to its website.
Lukas is involved in work with the Walton Family Foundation.
On the foundation's work, Lukas recalled that "one of the first grants that we did back in the day was help to develop a sustainable fisheries label. That to me, was a shooting star, was a golden emblem of what would be a successful marketplace development."
The family foundation centers its environmental efforts on "protecting rivers, oceans and the communities they support."
In 2021, Lukas founded and publicly launched Builders Vision, an impact investing group working to tackle social and environmental problems. It's focused on "sustainable food and agriculture, healthy oceans, renewable energy and thriving communities," according to its website.
Lukas Walton is the richest person in Illinois, according to Forbes' 2024 list of the wealthiest people in every state. In July 2022, he and his wife, Samantha, sold their home in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood for $1.7 million, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Lukas and his wife sold their home Chicago in 2022.
Russian Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters fire missiles during the Aviadarts competition, as part of the International Army Games 2021, at the Dubrovichi range outside Ryazan, Russia.
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
Ukrainian forces used drones to attack an airfield deep inside Russia last month.
Since then, Russia has removed its aircraft from the area and dispersed them elsewhere.
Western intelligence says this will lead to more strain on Moscow's aircrews.
Russia has pulled dozens of aircraft away from the front lines in response to a massive Ukrainian drone attack on a military base deep behind enemy lines, according to new Western intelligence.
Ukrainian forces on April 27 fired dozens of attack drones at the Kushchyovskaya airfield, and at two oil refineries in southwest Russia, likely attempting to disrupt Moscow's highly destructive glide-bomb operations. The strikes marked Kyiv's latest long-range attacks targeting Moscow's military and energy facilities.
Britain's defense ministry said the attack on Kushchyovskaya has "likely contributed to approximately 40 aircraft of different types being removed from the area and dispersed to multiple airfields further from the front line" over the past week.
"The impact of this is unlikely to be immediately obvious or dramatic. However, Ukraine has already demonstrated the ability to strike much further into Russia than these dispersal locations," the UK wrote in a Friday intelligence update. It did not specify where these new locations were, though.
Sukhoi Su-34 bombers drop bombs during the Aviadarts competition, as part of the International Army Games 2018, at the Dubrovichi range outside Ryazan, Russia.
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
"Forcing such dispersal measures means that length of sorties will have to increase to maintain the same permanency over the battle space," the intelligence update continued. "This will in turn require more fuel, increasing cost, while also placing more strain on the aircrews."
Such results would be a win for Ukraine as it looks to alleviate the strain on its front line forces and its air-defense network, which has been under growing stress in recent months as it lacked critical interceptor munitions.
The late-April attack was not the first time Ukrainian deep strikes have forced Russia to relocate its vulnerable assets. Kyiv's fleet of exploding naval drones has wreaked havoc on Moscow's Black Sea Fleet, compelling it to disperse warships from its headquarters in the occupied Crimean peninsula to a port city along Russia's southwestern coast.
The Kushchyovskaya airfield is home to Russia's Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets. It was not immediately clear if any aircraft were struck in the attack last weekend, but Britain's defense ministry, citing open-source video footage, said that a number of glide-bomb kits had been destroyed in a storage facility.
Russian Su-35s, Su-34s, and Su-30s fly in formation over central Moscow during the Victory Day military parade on May 9, 2021.
Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images
Glide bombs have flight control surfaces that allow them to soar toward a target rather than free fall and are a kind of standoff weapon, meaning Russian aircraft can release them at a distance beyond the range of Ukraine's air-defense systems.
These munitions are difficult to intercept because they have short flight times, small radar signatures, and non-ballistic trajectories. Destroying Moscow's warplanes before they can release the weapon or hitting them on the ground are really the only ways to defeat the threat.
Glide bombs have long been a headache for Ukraine, but Russia has increasingly relied on them this year to strike Kyiv's ground forces on the front lines and in positions in the rear to devastating effect. Experts have warned that these munitions could play a significant role in supporting Moscow's ground operations in the coming months.
Even before the Kushchyovskaya strike, Ukraine has tried going after Russia's airbases in an apparent bid to stomp out the glide-bomb threat. In April, for instance, Kyiv launched a large number of drones at the Morozovsk airbase, although the extent of the damage was ultimately unclear.
There are two weeks left for the public to comment on Biden's new student-debt relief plan.
Once the public comment period ends, the administration will move toward final implementation.
Still, legal challenges and the election pose threats to the debt cancellation.
The American people have just two weeks left to give President Joe Biden's administration input on its new student-loan forgiveness plan.
On April 17, the Education Department published its draft rules for a broader version of debt relief to the Federal Register. First unveiled in early April, the new plan is expected to benefit over 30 million borrowers through a range of provisions, including canceling unpaid interest for borrowers and providing debt relief to those who have made at least 20 years of payments.
This new plan is intended to replace Biden's first attempt at relief that the Supreme Court struck down last summer. In contrast to the first plan, this one requires the administration to undergo a process known as negotiated rulemaking, which entails a series of negotiations with stakeholders and an opportunity for the public to comment on the plans before final implementation.
The plan is now in the public comment period, and there are two weeks left for anyone who wishes to provide input on the administration's proposals. So far, according to the Federal Register, the plan has received 24,532 comments as of Friday morning.
The comments are available to be viewed publicly, and some of them were supportive of Biden's plan. One stated:
"The more student loan debt that can be forgiven the better. My mom's loans were forgiven last month, and it has changed her life. The period of time when my loans were paused allowed me to buy a home. My loans are currently in repayment, and if that burden could be lifted it would be life-changing for me."
Meanwhile, others were more critical:
"No if you borrow money you need to pay it back. why should people who are hard working pay for a lazy person school. student loans needs to be payed back by the borrower not by people who are working for a living."
Once the public comment period ends on May 17, the Education Department can choose to adjust its proposals based on the feedback it received or move ahead toward final implementation. In the coming months, the department also plans to unveil a separate proposal to get relief to borrowers experiencing financial hardship, which will also have a public comment period.
The department has said it plans to move as quickly as possible with the relief this fall, but not only does the presidential election bring uncertainty to the fate of the relief — it's highly likely legal challenges will once again attempt to block it from carrying out.
For example, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote on X that he would see Biden in court after the release of new details for the debt relief, and he already filed a lawsuit to block the SAVE income-driven repayment plan, arguing it was an overreach of the administration's authority.
SEC rules require publicly traded companies to disclose their workers' median annual pay.
Here's the median wage for workers at 19 retail companies, from lowest to highest.
Retail workers' hourly wages have increased substantially in the last several years as major employers like Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, and more have plowed billions of dollars into pay increases in a bid to get people to join — and stay.
Ever since Amazon set its minimum wage at $15 in 2018, more retailers have followed suit by offering starting wages that are more than double the national minimum of $7.25. The Federal minimum was last set in 2009.
But hourly wages are just one part of the pay equation. An employee's earnings also depend greatly on how many hours they work. That can vary considerably, especially in seasonal segments.
So, to get a picture of what the typical worker makes in a year at various retail brands, Business Insider used AlphaSense to find the data in the most recent proxy filings that publicly traded companies must file with the US Securities Exchange Commission.
Rules following the financial crisis of 2008 require public companies to calculate their median worker's annual salary to compare it to the CEO's compensation.
"Median" refers to the middle-most value in an ordered list. In terms of compensation, that means about half of a company's workers earn more and half earn less than its "median employee."
Scroll through below to see where 19 of the largest companies rank, from lowest to highest annual pay.
19. Gap: $7,573
Gap employed 84,815 people last year.
Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins/Business Insider
The 2023 calculation is up from $7,348 in 2021, and the company says its typical median employee would be a part-time sales associate in Canada who did not work the full year.
18. Ulta: $13,193
Ulta has 58,834 employees.
Ann Matica/Insider
Ulta identifies its median employee by ranking all 52,929 associates from high to low by total cash compensation and selecting the middlemost one. Its 2018 median was $27,235, but was calculated at that time including the value of employer-paid healthcare benefits.
17. Starbucks: $14,209
Starbucks has more than 390,000 employees around the world.
Starbucks
Starbucks says its median figure is calculated from its global workforce of baristas, which causes it to be lower than it might be for only its US employees. Still, the company considers its median employee a part-time barista in the United States.
16. TJX: $14,857
TJX employs roughly 349,000 people worldwide.
Gabbi Shaw/Business Insider
TJX Companies — which include TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and others — increased its median pay in 2023 by 32% from 2018's level of $11,243.
15. McDonald's: $15,802
The McDonald's corporation employs about 150,000 people across its offices and company-owned restaurants.
Reuters
The burger giant's median is more than double the 2018 level of $7,017, and it says the 2023 median worker is a restaurant crew employee located in Poland. About 95% of McDonald's restaurants are operated by franchisees whose workers aren't included in this report.
13. Chipotle: $16,595
Chipotle has 115,000 people working around the world.
Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Chipotle's median worker is an hourly part-time employee who works roughly 24 hours per week at one of its restaurants in Florida.
13. Foot Locker: $20,168
Foot Locker calls its 45,000 employees "Stripers."
Bethany Biron/Business Insider
The shoe retailer's pay is up from 2018's median of $8,554, and the company says its median worker in 2023 averaged 27 hours per week in a store in Madrid, Spain.
12. Advance Auto Parts: $23,923
Advance Auto Parts employs approximately 69,000 workers.
Mark Stehle/AP
Advance Auto Parts includes all team members in their analysis of the median employee, including part-time, full-time, and seasonal team members. The 2023 level is up from $18,460 in 2018.
11. Target: $26,696
Target employs 415,000 workers across the US.
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Target annualizes the pay of all full- and part-time employees, but takes only the actual earnings of seasonal and temporary workers to find the median for the whole workforce. The company says its median team member is employed part-time.
10. Walmart: $27,642
Walmart has 2.1 million employees worldwide, with 1.6 million in the US.
Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
Walmart is the largest private employer in the world with 2.1 million workers around the world, of which 1.6 million are based in the US. The company uses statistical sampling to identify a group of associates paid within a range of .5% of the company's median earnings amount, and then chooses the median compensated associate from that group. Its 2023 median was up more than 40% from $19,177 in 2018.
Albertsons owns 15 grocery store companies and says its median worker is a full-time hourly employee.
*2022 figure as 2023 Proxy Statement not yet filed.
7. Lowe's: $32,626
Lowe's employs 285,000 workers.
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Lowe's includes full-time and part-time employees to determine the median employee and considers actual base salary, bonus or commission paid, and any overtime. Its 2023 rate is up roughly 36% from the 2018 level of $23,905.
6. Best Buy: $32,656
Best Buy has more than 85,000 employees.
David Zalubowski/AP
Best Buy employs roughly 95,000 workers, mostly in the US and Canada. The median employee was identified by annualizing the earnings of all part- and full-time workers except for the CEO.
5. Macy's: $34,438
Macy's employee over 85,500 employees.
Noam Galai/Getty Images
More than half of Macy's workforce consists of part-time or seasonal employees, and the company estimates its median based on all employees other than the CEO. The 2023 median is more than double 2018's median of $13,810.
4. Home Depot: $35,131
Home Depot has approximately 465,000 employees.
Joe Raedle/Getty
Home Depot bases its data on its total workforce and says the median-paid associate was an hourly employee in the US. The 2023 median is up 66% from $21,095 in 2018.
3. Nordstrom: $35,636
Nordstrom employs about 54,000 workers.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Nordstrom includes full-time, part-time seasonal, and temporary employees to identify the median employee and says roughly half of its workforce is part-time or seasonal. The 2023 median is up 18% from $30,105 in 2018.
2. Amazon: $36,274
Amazon has 1.5 million employees worldwide.
Sandy Huffaker/Reuters
When calculating its median compensation, Amazon considers all full-time, part-time, and temporary employees worldwide, excluding CEO Andy Jassy. When considering only US full-time employees, the median annual compensation was $45,613.
1. Costco: $50,202
Costco has 316,000 worldwide employees, with 206,000 in the US.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Costco's calculations include full-time, part-time, seasonal, and temporary employees, and use a combination of salary, bonus, equity compensation, and other measurable benefits paid during the year.
A member of the mobile air defence group checks an M2 Browning machine gun donated by a volunteer fund in April 2023.
REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
A Ukrainian unit is using century-old US guns to target Russian drones and planes.
Ukraine is running low on missiles, which are far more expensive than drones and ammo.
One unit is using cheaper M2 Brownings, which were developed in 1918, the last year of World War I.
Ukrainians are putting machine guns first designed in the US at the end of World War I on the back of pickup trucks to try to shoot down Russian drones and spy planes.
Soldiers in Ukraine's 117th Territorial Defense Brigade are using guns, including the M2 Browning, to try to take down Russia's Shahed drones, the Kyiv Independent reported.
The M2 was used by American forces in World War II, and is still used by some today, but it was initially developed in 1918, the last year of World War I.
The Kyiv Independent, which visited one Ukrainian unit, reported that they are often the first to confront drones that Russia fires north, toward the cities of Sumy and Kyiv.
Its members monitor the sky, watch their tracking equipment, and drive where needed, eager to shoot down whatever they can.
The wreckage of what Kyiv has described as an Iranian Shahed drone downed near Kupiansk, Ukraine.
Ukrainian military's Strategic Communications Directorate via AP, File
Russia has been firing drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities and infrastructure since it launched its full-scale invasion, often targeting places far from the front lines.
These attacks have killed civilians, destroyed residential buildings, and damaged Ukraine's energy network.
Ukraine faces a dilemma when it comes to shooting them down.
Shahed drones are estimated to cost around $20,000 each, but some of the air-defense missiles that Ukraine has in its arsenal have a price tag in the millions.
Ukraine's supply of air-defense missiles has also been running low after Republicans stalled billions in further aid for six months.
Soldiers often had to make difficult choices about when to use their precious stockpile.
That's where weapons like the M2 Browning come in.
Its predecessor, the M1917, was designed by American John Browning and first used in 1917, with the M2 coming the following year.
The unit's leader, call sign Dias, described the Browning to the Kyiv Independent as "reliable, user-friendly" and with a higher fire rate.
But he and other soldiers still said they desired more modern weapons: "We're eager to take down Shaheds. We could cut them with such weapons," he said.
Green Berets fire a Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in April 2019.
US Army/Sgt. Steven Lewis
Dias' unit is made up of 16 soldiers, who were all civilians before Russia's invasion, the outlet reported.
Dias, who had combat experience, said he "taught them to shoot and survive" and that they have downed six Shaheds and 12 reconnaissance aircraft.
He described the unit as protecting the city of Sumy, which is close to the border with Russia, and said that his unit works within range of Russian artillery, guided bombs, and first-person-view drones.
Another soldier described the wider region to the Kyiv Independent as "Ukraine's northern shield."
He called their group "the last defensive line" for the area.
Stocks are in a "late secular bull market," BofA's Michael Hartnett said in a Friday research note.
That'll end in either a bubble or a recession, he warned.
Equities have sputtered recently, with investors fretting about stubborn inflation and slow growth.
The bull market that's pushed stock prices higher for the past year and a half will probably end in tears, Bank of America's Michael Hartnett warned.
Equities are in a "late secular bull market" that likely "ends with [a] bubble and/or recession," the bank's chief investment strategist wrote in a Friday research note seen by Business Insider.
Hartnett's been warning for months that stocks are nearing bubble territory. Since October 2022, the S&P 500 has soared by more than 40%, powered higher by the AI investing craze and a better-than-expected economy.
The Federal Reserve has also signaled that it's likely to delay cutting interest rates until the second half of 2024, which has further weighed on valuations.
Hartnett also said the economy could be headed for a period of stagflation, pointing to Friday's April jobs report as a key data point.
Spring's GDP and consumer price index figures looked "stagflationary," he wrote, adding that the market would likely see a lower-than-expected monthly non-farm payrolls number as "a risk-off print." The 175,000 jobs added was considerably lower than the 238,000 forecast by economists.
JPMorgan also flagged stagflation — a combination of high inflation and sluggish growth — as a potential threat to the economy this week.
"While the worry for risk markets is overheating that jeopardizes rate cutting, in contrast to the overheating story, the recent GDP print heads in a stagflationary direction relative to market expectations," a team led by equity strategist Marko Kolanovic said in a research note.
Hartnett's bearish stance clashes with the view held by BofA's head of US equity and quantitative strategy, Savita Subramanian, who has predicted that stocks' bull market will last.
While chatter about the threat posed by stagflation is intensifying, the economy looks resilient enough to carry on powering equities higher, she said in a Thursday research note.
The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert in northwest China.
GREG BAKER/Getty Images
China has developed a large network of military satellites.
A Pentagon official warned they could be used to target US troops.
China is expanding its military presence in space.
China has developed a network of hundreds of military satellites that could be used to target US troops, a Pentagon official warned.
Maj. Gen. Greg Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, told a conference on Thursday that China had developed a sophisticated military satellite program.
He said it could be used to track and target US troops moving to defend Taiwan, Defense One reported.
"It's to provide indications and warnings of sailors, marines, airmen, trying to move west, if directed, to defend freedom," Gagnon said.
"They will now—in a way that we're not comfortable talking about in America—they will be inside a rapidly expanding weapons engagement zone."
He went on to explain that means they can track their targets from a long-distance, even if those targets are mobile.
"Few countries have that advantage," he said.
The US has long deployed a network of satellites to monitor potential threats, but Gagnon said that China had ended the US monopoly on using satellite data to strike targets at very long distances.
He described it as an "architecture that's designed to go to war and sustain in war. And the purpose of reconnaissance and surveillance, from the ultimate high ground, is, of course, to inform decisions about fire control for militaries."
Military experts believe that if a war were to break out between major powers, the opening shots would likely be fired in space in a bid to disable the satellite systems militaries rely on for communications.
China has developed weapons capable of taking out US satellites, systems for monitoring US troops, and hypersonic weapons capable of evading air defense systems — and some are warning could be preparing to use the moon as a platform for attacks.
The number of Chinese crafts in orbit has risen by around 500% since its space military division was formed in 2015, said Gagnon, and of the 400 launched in the last two years around half are used to monitor Earth.
US military leaders are warning that the US must step up if it wants to avoid being beaten in the race for space dominance.
"We are at a pivotal moment in history," Troy Meink, principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates the US fleet of spy satellites, said at a recent event in Colorado, as quoted by Space.com.
"For the first time in decades, US leadership in space and space technology is being challenged," Meink added. "Our competitors are actively seeking ways to threaten our capabilities, and we see this every day."
He's 64 years old, and his dream is to buy a gently used sailboat, sell most of his belongings, and spend his golden years traveling around the Caribbean and South America.
But Kirsch — a resident of Hill, New Hampshire — feels like his sailboat is drifting further and further away. He has an IT job and earns $64,805 a year,according to documents viewed by Business Insider. He said he maintains IRA accounts and puts money into his 401(k), but he still isn't confident he's saved enough to retire.
Kirsch is hoping to start collecting Social Security checks in a couple of years, just before his 67th birthday. That additional money would allow him to put more of his professional income into his retirement accounts during the last years of his career, he said.
"My biggest fear is finding myself at 75 standing at the door at Walmart greeting people as they come in," he told BI.
Kirsch isn't alone. He's one of 30 million Americans known as "peak boomers," a group of baby boomers born between 1959 and 1964 who will start turning 65 this year and are heading toward retirement. However, many of these boomers are worried about having enough money to fully stop working and cover their living expenses.
The Census Bureau's Current Population Survey found that more than half of Americans over 65 have an annual income of $30,000 or less. And, per an April report from the retirement research firm Alliance Lifetime Income's Retirement Income Institute, 52.5% of boomers have $250,000 or less in assets.
For many, Social Security won't be enough to fill the gaps. As of March 2024, the Social Security Administration saidthat itsaverage monthly check sent to recipients is $1,774.83. And, if lawmakers don't intervene, the US Social Security fund is set to dry out by the late 2030s.
This group of boomers is feeling the consequences of the US' switch from an employer-funded pension to the employee-funded 401(k) system in the 1980s.
Even with aggressive saving, he's not sure about the future
Kirsch's anxiety about retirement has fluctuated throughout his career. He has experienced a few periods of unemployment that made saving money difficult, and his past employers didn't always offer retirement benefits. He has been in his current job for the past 12 years and is now using "highly aggressive" retirement contributions to reach his goals, he said.
"If I'm by myself, out-competed, in need for money, in my seventies, and having health problems — life's going suck, that's my fear," Kirsch said.
Kirsch wishes more people understood that some older adults aren't able to adequately prepare for retirement because of life circumstances. He also wishes government safety net programsfor affordable housing and healthcare didn't wait for people to reach "critical status" and be "destitute" before they provide assistance.
Although he hasn't given up on his sailboat dream, Kirsch said he's anxious about having enough to live comfortably a decade from now. He often tells his young adult son to think about retirement early.
"Start saving and do it as aggressively as you can,"he said. "And, when you can't be aggressive, still save something."
Are you worried about being financially ready for retirement? How are you preparing? Share your story with this reporter at allisonkelly@insider.com.
Shake Shack raised menu prices by about 3% in mid-March, CFO Katie Fogertey told investors on Thursday.
The burger and frozen custard chain had already also raised menu prices for delivery through its app and website by 5% in January, she said. This had pushed up prices on third-party delivery orders, where Shake Shack charges a 15% premium compared to ordering through the company directly, she said.
Overall, menu prices went up in the mid-single digits in the quarter, Fogertey said.
"We have no current plans to further increase price this year," she said.
Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti said that some of its lower-income customers were "probably trading down from time-to-time," though he didn't say whether they were switching to cheaper chains or cooking at home instead.
The price increases this year were introduced to address food and wage inflation, Fogertey said. She said that the March rises came from a roughly 7% price increase in California, with prices elsewhere going up by between 2% and 2.5%, which she said was "very consistent with historical pricing practices" at the chain.
Many restaurants have pushed some of their higher payrolls onto diners by raising menu prices, like at Shake Shack. Some have also tried to cut their costs by stopping hiring, turning to automation and technology like digital order kiosks, or delaying renovations.
Shack Shack's same-restaurant sales were up 1.6% year-over-year in the quarter, a huge slump compared to the 10.3% jump in same-restaurant sales from 2022 to 2023. It attributed the drop in the rate of growth of comparable sales to a 2.1% fall in traffic, believed to have been mainly caused by poor weather.
The company estimated that it missed out on about $3 million in sales due to weather as customers dined out less and its restaurants cut their hours or even temporarily closed.
Is fast food too expensive? Email this reporter at gdean@insider.com.
Janet Yellen told Congress that buying a starter home has become "prohibitively expensive."
Soaring prices and mortgage rates have made it "almost impossible" for first-time buyers, she said.
The Treasury chief flagged two proposed tax credits that could boost buying power and raise supply.
Owning a home is a key element of the American dream, yet it's become an unattainable fantasy for many people, Janet Yellen said.
"With house prices having gone up, and now with much higher interest and mortgage rates, it's almost impossible for first-time buyers," the Treasury boss said during testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday.
Yellen was nodding to the fact that the median house price has jumped 40% in the past four years to a near-record high of over $420,000, per Redfin data.
At the same time, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has surged from around 3% at the end of 2021 to around 7%.
Put differently, homes are pricier than ever, and borrowing the money required to purchase them has become far more costly. As a result, Yellen said that buying a first home is "almost prohibitively expensive."
Mortgage rates have soared since early 2022 because the Federal Reserve has hiked its benchmark interest rate from nearly zero to north of 5% in an effort to curb historic inflation.
That has created a "lock-in effect," Yellen said. Prospective sellers are holding off on listing their properties because they're unwilling to give up the dirt-cheap mortgage rate they secured years ago.
The resulting inventory shortage has pushed up home values and fueled an affordability crisis. Potential buyers are balking at paying much higher prices and taking on far larger monthly mortgage payments than they expected, meaning the housing market is essentially frozen.
"We know that affordable housing, and especially starter homes, is an area where we really need to do a lot to increase availability," Yellen said.
The veteran economist and former Fed chair highlighted two proposals from the Biden administration that might alleviate the problem.
The first is the mortgage relief credit, which would give first-time buyers a $10,000 tax credit spread over two years to help them purchase their first property.
That would reduce the effective mortgage rate on the median home by over 1.5 percentage points for two years, potentially helping more than 3.5 million middle-class families, the White House said.
Biden has also proposed a one-year tax credit of up to $10,000 for middle-class families that sell their starter home to someone who'll live in it. The White House estimated the credit would help nearly 3 million families.
Moreover, the president has called on Congress to expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and other legislation with the goal of building and renovating more than two million homes to help address the wider housing shortage.
However, real estate experts have previously told Business Insider that Biden's measures could stoke more demand and push up home prices, and warned it would take years to close the supply gap.