The largest driver of the increased cost in making a fattoush is olive oil, which has risen from representing just under 20 percent of the total cost of the dish in 2022 to almost 34 percent of the total cost in 2023. (Credit: Joseph Eid/AFP)
As we enter the fourth week of Ramadan, fattoush prices appear brutally high but stable.
On March 21, we predicted that the average price for a bowl of fattoush at the start of Ramadan on March 22 would be LL33,500. That would make it triple its average price in 2022 and over 11 times its average price in 2021.
On March 30, the Ministry of Economy and Trade released its first weekly fattoush price index for Ramadan 2023, showing prices largely in line with our prediction. As of Monday, March 27, they found a bowl of fattoush to cost LL35,859 — that’s LL1,953 more than we expected as of that date. At that price, a family of five eating fattoush each night of Ramadan would spend roughly LL5.4 million on the dish, more than the monthly minimum wage.
As of the following Monday, April 3, the price of fattoush had come down slightly to a still-high LL34,832. Data for April 10 is not yet available.
As expected, the largest driver of cost is olive oil, which has risen from representing just under 20 percent of the total cost of the dish in 2022 to almost 34 percent of the total cost in 2023. Eighty-two percent of the cost decrease between the first and second Monday of Ramadan is due to a decrease in the supermarket price of olive oil during that week.