From Business Insider:

A great opening question for your budgeting lesson as we know from a previous post that food is the second largest budget item for teens.  You might ask them to write down what three chains have seen the greatest increase in popularity.

Here are companies that correspond to their ticker symbols:

• CMG:  Chipotle
• PNRA:  Panera Bread Company
• BWLD:  Buffalo Wild Wings
• CAKE:  Cheesecake Factory
• RRGB:  Red Robin
• SBUX:  Starbucks
• TXRH: Texas Roadhouse
• DNKN:  Dunkin Donuts
• MCD:  McDonalds

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Extension idea:  Have students look at the stock prices for these companies on 12/31/2006 and compare to today’s prices (type in ticker symbol at Yahoo Finance).

• Which stock among the most popular restaurants (from this chart) had the highest stock market return?
• How did the restaurant stocks that saw declines in customers perform over this period?

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Check out the NGPF lesson on “Creating a Food Budget“

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.