You don't think the 'greedy' food production industry is gonna raise their prices for restaurants?

It doesn't matter what I think, or what you think. The intermediate PPI I linked is what they're paying. And what they've been paying has seen annualized deflation of ~5% for most of a year now. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because we can't stop eating but restaurants can close their doors if their profit margins disappear so their demand is more elastic. It doesn't make sense for suppliers to drive their customers out of business. Maybe it's something else, it doesn't matter. They're paying what they're paying, and what they're paying has been deflating at 5% annualized for a while.

Or are you saying...all the restaurants in America, along with all the grocery stores, are conspiring to keep prices high for consumers?

No need for a conspiracy when there is a lack of incentive to do anything else. Why would they ever charge less than we'll pay?

And no single mom & pop shop is like, hey, we could lower our prices

Have you not been paying attention for the last 40 years? Small business in competition with giant corporations have to run razor thin margins to stay competitive. And if one did manage to find a little fat to cut, Walmart et al. will just run at a loss until they're gone.

As long as we can pay, they'll charge more. Where is the money coming from? I didn't know, maybe it's the increased savings rate during COVID I read so much about, maybe something else. For things with inelastic demand people will deplete savings and run up credit cards. Once that money has been extracted...blood, stone, etc. The prices will come down, but not until maintaining them is literally impossible. Anything else would violate fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder.