Finding a restaurant that serves an affordable roast beef dinner lately has been difficult as beef roast prices have skyrocketed by about 56% over the last six years.
Finding a restaurant that serves sliced roast beef has been difficult for me in my area, as it is not a common menu item. Even when I go to steakhouses like Texas Roadhouse or Outback Steakhouse, roast beef isn’t on the menu.
Consumers can try Golden Corral for carved roast beef or Cracker Barrel for its homestyle pot roast, but visiting legendary Sign of the Beefcarver in the Detroit area is not possible, since it has closed.
Sign of the Beefcarver closed its last restaurant after rising costs, led by skyrocketing beef prices, made it impossible for it to continue operating. MSPhotographic / Getty Images
Sign of the Beefcarver closes
Iconic Metro Detroit-based restaurant chain Sign of the Beefcarver closed its last location in Royal Oak, Mich., on Oct. 25, blaming the lingering effects from the Covid-19 mandated shutdown and the historically high price of roast beef for its need to shut down after operating for almost 70 years, the company said in a Facebook post.
“Due to extreme financial pressure from rising food costs, not the least of which is the historically high price of roast beef, our menu namesake, we can no longer sustain the losses that have resulted,” Sign of the Beefcarver said in the post.
“We sincerely thank you for seventy years of loyal and faithful support for the Beefcarver! We have always tried to offer exceptional value and quality in the friendliest family atmosphere possible,” the post said.
First restaurant opened in 1957
Sign of the Beefcarver, which began operating its first restaurant in Royal Oak in 1957, grew to 12 locations at its peak, including one in Chicago. The restaurant described itself on its website as “an Early American themed cafeteria restaurant with waitress service.”
The restaurant’s daily entrees included roast beef, baked scrod, spaghetti, roast beef sandwich on onion roll, macaroni and cheese, plus a rotation of 36 other entrees, such as meat loaf, beef ribs, catfish, turkey and dressing, chicken breast over rice, and beef stew. The menu also included various soups, salads, vegetables and desserts.
Offers cafeteria-style service
Customers would proceed through the cafeteria-style line, choosing their meal, then pay a cashier at the end of the line.
“At the end, while you pay our friendly cashier, one of our waitstaff will carry your tray to a quiet corner, the TV room, or perhaps in front of our cozy fireplace,” according to the restaurant’s website.
The last Sign of the Beefcarver to close before Royal Oak was the chain’s Dearborn, Mich., location, which operated for 51 years from 1967 to 2018. The Dearborn location had faced declining sales before the owners closed the restaurant in June 2018 and sold the building to a strip mall developer, Eater reported at the time.
Price of roast beef spikes by 56%
The cost of operating a restaurant that sells roast beef has become more difficult over the last six years, as the price of uncooked beef roasts has risen about 55.7% from about $5.84 per pound in October 2020 to about $9.09 per pound in October 2026, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
“If we raised our prices to the point that covered our all-time high costs, they would be prohibitively expensive for a lot of people, and we would not be providing the excellent food for the value we have always strove for,” the restaurant said in its Facebook post.
When the founders Jack Joliat and Bob LaJoie opened their first restaurant in Royal Oak, it was named Sign of the Beefeater. The owners were forced to change the name to Sign of the Beefcarver in the 1970s after a lawsuit was filed by the makers of Beefeater Gin.
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