Americans are cooking at home more often and targeting budget-friendly foods, according to The Campbell's Company.

• 🏠 "Consumers are cooking at home at the highest levels since early 2020," Campbell's CEO Mick Beekhuizen said in a statement Monday tied to the company's earnings.
• And home meal preparers are also "favoring ingredients that help stretch tighter food budgets," he added on the company's earnings call.

🥫 Zoom in: For Campbell's — whose brands include its eponymous soup, Prego sauce and Snyder's pretzels — the trend manifested itself in an unspecified increase in soup sales and a 5% decrease in organic sales of snacks.

The impact: The comments come as restaurant chains like McDonald's have already flagged softness in spending from low- and middle-income consumers.

• 🍟 The number of low-income consumers visiting U.S. fast-food restaurants was down "nearly double digits" in the year's first three months compared to 2024, McDonald's CEO Christopher Kempczinski said recently.
• Visits from middle-income consumers across the industry "fell nearly as much," he added.

What they're saying: "Consumers remain under significant financial pressure and given the price of eating out has gone up by so much it is not surprising many households are cutting back," GlobalData analyst Neil Saunders tells Axios in an email.

• "Eating at home may not be as much fun, but it is more cost effective — even compared to fast food which, for a family, has become very expensive.

"It's up to God and the board."

🇪🇺 The European Union is preparing "countermeasures" after the Trump administration hiked tariffs on steel. They would take effect by July 14. (AP)

💊 Bristol Myers Squibb agreed to pay up to $11.1 billion to license a cancer drug from COVID vaccine maker BioNTech. (MarketWatch)

🤝 Sanofi agreed to acquire Blueprint Medicines, a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech focused on rare immunology diseases, for $9.1 billion in cash and up to $400 million in earnouts. (Axios)

🚗 Tesla CEO Elon Musk's public denial that the company had killed plans for a cheap EV alarmed senior executives. He reportedly confirmed that it was still canceled when they asked him. (Reuters)

Chicken strips have been a red-hot menu item lately.

• Little surprise today then that Dave's Hot Chicken just landed a nearly $1 billion valuation from a private equity firm.

Driving the news: Roark Capital inked a deal to buy a majority stake in the fast-growing chain founded eight years ago in an East Hollywood parking lot. The valuation was confirmed by Dave's CEO Bill Phelps on CNBC.

• Dave's generated more than $600 million in sales in the U.S. last year, a 57% jump from the year before, CNBC reported, citing data from Technomic.

🌶️ The intrigue: Dave's focuses on selling oversized chicken tenders, and it also brings the heat — which appeals to younger customers.

• Its hottest flavor, called "Reaper," requires a waiver to eat and has sent at least one customer to the hospital, CNBC noted.