Friends shocked over price of meal after realising what three-letter word on menu actually meant

Heading out to restaurants with friends for the first time is an understated rite of passage, and for many it’s a big wake-up call. Bills quickly rack up, prices aren’t always immediately clear, and the tail end of the order likely has a few unexpected surcharges.

It’s a (hopefully) tasty way for a slip of paper to say, ‘Welcome to the real world!’.

The ways in which menus are laid out and written can be confusing too, and it might be tempting to see an undefined price and make a guess as to the actual charge. Generally speaking, if you’re unsure on the price then you should absolutely ask, but for those early forays into dining out it’s all too easy to get caught out.

For 20-year-old Aribella Menold, she and her friends learned this the hard way.

Posting to Instagram earlier this month, Aribella shared a short clip of her and two friends sitting around a table at Moonrakers in Beaufort, North Carolina. Filming their stunned faces, the camera then pans over the bill to reveal what’s got them worked up.

Listed on the bill is a kid’s grilled cheese for $10, a Sprite for $3, a baby kale Caesar salad with chicken for $28, and, the cause for consternation, two steaks at $52 (£38.72) each.

After sales tax and a 3% credit card surcharge – ouch – it all came to $159.14 (£118.49), and that’s before considering a tip.

Laid over the video is some text that reads, “POV: you didn’t know what ‘MKT’ meant on the steak menu and now you’re paying for it”.

In some ways you have to admire their lack of interest in asking for the actual price, leaving their fate up to whatever ‘mkt’ means. Hopefully that’s a lesson learned.

If you, like Aribella and pals, aren’t already aware, if a restaurant menu reads ‘MKT’ or ‘MP’ then it stands for ‘market price’. This means the price is variable to reflect fluctuating ingredient prices.

It’s more common for seafood options than steak, but beef prices are particularly high right now. In fact, they’re near record prices. According to Nerd Wallet’s report on data from the US Bureau of Statistics, a sirloin steak’s market price rose above $12 in April 2025, up from a recent low of $10.17 in December 2022.

“Grocery price inflation overall seems to be relatively steady, according to the latest consumer price index (CPI), which showed food prices were 2.9% higher in May compared to the previous year — a higher inflation rate than the CPI as a whole, which went up 2.4%,” it said.

“But beef and veal prices were 8.6% higher on average in May compared to the same time last year, and ground beef led the pack with a 9.9% year-over-year increase.”

So, yeah, it’s not a great time to be paying market price on a steak. Naturally the restaurant will charge a hefty markup on its raw ingredients prices, so that $12 market price isn’t what restaurant customers should expect to be charged. That figure just represents the increased pressure on steak-selling restaurants as costs continue to increase.

As to why the price has risen so dramatically, Nerd Wallet explained: “Beef is so expensive right now because drought, high grain prices, inflation and rising interest rates made cattle farming a costly endeavour in recent years.

“To deal with rising operating costs, many U.S. cattle farmers reduced the size of their herds — and some got out of the business altogether. As a result, the U.S. cattle inventory is the smallest it’s been since 1951."