The Germans’ favorite fast food dish has become quite expensive. The average price for a kebab in Berlin is now 7.30. Inflation is slowly weakening. But that doesn’t mean that kebab lovers will soon have to pay less again.
Since last summer, prices for Germany’s most popular fast food dish have risen sharply. A doner kebab in Berlin now costs an average of 7.30 euros. Six months ago it was 24 cents less, according to a current analysis by the online food service Lieferando. Many snack bar owners were forced to pass on the costs to their customers due to higher energy and food prices and the introduction of the minimum wage.
There was no way around it for Adnan Demirsöz either. The owner of Teras Restaurant and Grill in Berlin-Mitte last raised the price for a kebab from 6.50 euros to 7.00 euros in December 2023. He defends the average price of 7.30 euros, and in his opinion even a price of 8.00 euros is still justified because of the increased costs. “Everyone in the supermarket can see how much food prices have risen. As the owner of a kebab restaurant, I’m not from another planet. I feel it too,” says Demirsöz ntv.de. Recently, meat, tomatoes and cucumbers have become significantly more expensive.
In order to cover costs, the owner of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s regular shop would now have to charge 7.50 euros and 8.00 euros. That’s why Demirsöz is also thinking about adjusting his price for a kebab again in six months – to 7.50 euros. So far, his customers have not complained about the increased costs. Opposite in the “Mall of Berlin” shopping center, the competition sells their kebabs for just 8.90 euros.
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Annual turnover of 2.4 billion euros
Lukas Podolski wants to charge 7.90 euros for a kebab in his new branch of the Mangal kebab chain in Berlin Kreuzberg, which opens this Sunday. The soccer player recently announced this in a discussion with YouTuber Sascha Hellinger and Twitch streamer MontanaBlack. In the conversation, the footballer not only justifies the price, he also makes it clear: “I think the kebab is still far too cheap.
The owner of the largest kebab skewer manufacturer Birat sees it similarly. Actually, the kebab should cost ten euros,” said owner Cihan Karaman to the “Stuttgarter Zeitung.” In recent years, the ingredients for the kebab skewers alone have become around 50 percent more expensive. However, the fact that snack bar operators will soon be charging their customers ten euros is Karaman doesn’t think so. The fear of alienating their customers is too great. The customers at Demirsöz in Berlin-Mitte don’t have to worry about prices like that. “Ten euros is already very steep. I don’t see that,” he tells ntv.de
According to the sociologist and author Eberhard Seidel, around 1,600 kebab shops compete with each other in Berlin. The capital is therefore the undisputed kebab metropolis. There are around 18,500 kebab shops and Turkish restaurants nationwide in Germany. According to the Association of Turkish Doner Kebab Manufacturers in Europe (ATDID), they achieve annual sales of 2.4 billion euros.
Podolski ventures to the birthplace of the kebab
And by the way: “The doner kebab as we know it is actually a Berlin creation,” says Seidel in an interview with the German Press Agency. The snack dish emerged from the interaction between Turkish immigrants and the Berlin majority society. The 66-year-old has been involved in the development of the doner kebab for more than 35 years and published the book: “Döner. A Turkish-German cultural history” in March 2022.
Where Podolski is opening his new branch this weekend is also the birthplace of the kebab. 50 years ago in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, all conditions were said to be right for a triumphant march. However, according to Seidel, there is no reliable answer as to who invented the kebab or who first offered it.
The ATDID, on the other hand, is certain: the former guest worker Kadir Nurman sold the first kebab in 1972 at the Zoo train station in Berlin – and therefore not in Kreuzberg. However, doner expert Seidel points out that it has been proven that the doner kebab was already available in some Turkish restaurants in Germany. Nurman was certainly not the first. “Nevertheless, it occupies an important place in the ancestral gallery of the fathers of the doner kebab in Germany.”
Success in Berlin is no coincidence
The expert also contradicts the story that the kebab was invented as a flatbread dish in Berlin. The kebab in bread was already available in Turkey in the mid-1960s. But he never became so popular there. “People in Turkey don’t eat so much on the street or in their hands; they prefer to sit down,” says Seidel. It is no coincidence that the doner kebab has become so successful in Berlin. In the 1970s and 1980s, the number of unemployed people in Berlin skyrocketed. “That’s why there was a great need to develop a source of income,” says the sociologist.
The kebab quickly became popular in Berlin because of its unbeatable price-performance ratio. Compared to other cities with millions of inhabitants, such as Hamburg, Munich and Cologne, the snack food still costs the least in the capital. According to Lieferando, snack bar owners in Munich charge the most in Germany with an average of 8.53 euros. Contrary to the trend, prices in the Bavarian capital have actually fallen sharply since last summer.
Inflation is now slowly easing, energy prices are becoming cheaper again and food prices are no longer as expensive. According to ZDFheute, the Hamburg consumer advice center does not assume that kebab prices will soon fall across the board again, despite favorable signs. “Wholesalers and international food companies in particular will try not to give up price thresholds that have been exceeded, or rather to maintain them for as long as possible,” the authority is quoted as saying.