The Price of Pizza
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed how much it costs to buy a pizza these days? I mean, I know we’ve had some inflation and whatnot, but I would love to see the data on the overall rate of inflation vs pizza inflation. I would say pizza inflation beats overall inflation by a mile.
It used to be an economical take-out dinner option. In fact, pretty much my entire life from the time I can remember has been a pepperoni pizza on Friday night. We were a family of 7 back when I was a kid and two pizzas fed us all pretty cheaply. I continued this tradition with my own nuclear unit family. And it’s one that continues into Empty Nesterhood.
It doesn’t hurt when you also live two minutes from THE BEST pizza ever, except for in Italy. Maple Glen Pizza. Hands down, best pizza I’ve ever had here in the US. And note the paragraph above, I am a bit of a pizza connoisseur. I’m 60 years old now. That’s a lot of pizza. Maple Glen always charged a bit more than the other pizza places in the area, because, well, as I’ve previously established, they are the best. And they can do so. Capitalism at its finest.
However many months ago now, I’m not sure exactly how long ago, but I went to pick up our pepperoni pizza on a Friday night and it came to $24.75. Since you are going to say “keep the change” It’s really $25.00! For a pizza with some pepperoni on it.
And here’s the thing I realized in that moment. They didn’t just raise the prices all at once, with a big leap from say $14 to $24.75 No, it was the slow and gradual approach. You know that expression about boiling a frog? Warm the water degree by degree so he doesn’t notice it until he’s then boiled and it’s too late to jump out. That’s what it was like with the price of pizza. One day, probably 10 years ago, I was paying $14.00 for that pizza. Now I am paying $24.75. Pretty sure wages haven’t kept up with that cost of living increase.
We decided to try some other pizzas. Maple Glen was always more money than the others, but at a certain point, psychologically you reach a threshold of how much you are willing to pay for some cheese, sauce, dough and pepperoni. $24.75 seemed to be ours.
We tried all the other ones in the area, like Uncle Eddie’s. That pepperoni pizza is only $18.00. But the taste? Texture? Just doesn’t compare. Same with the others we tried. We even gave WaWa pizza a go. We are huge WaWa people. We love WaWa. Their pizza? Awful. On a par with Elio’s. I actually didn’t even taste it because Ernie took the first bite and said it was awful. It didn’t look the least appetizing to me and I thought why waste the calories even on a bite?
Anyway, we start rationalizing to ourselves. Well, life is short. Carpe diem. We should eat the good pizza. It’s only $6.75 more than the other pizzas that aren’t nearly as good. I mean, it’s worth it, right? If I cut out my Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks that alone can make up the difference.
So we returned to our tried and true. Our favorite. The best pizza ever. It was a Friday night. We placed our order. One pepperoni pizza please. We picked it up. We got home. With mouths watering, we excitedly opened the box….and…wth?? What happened to the pepperoni? It was tiny, miniature, small pepperoni! Their pepperoni pizza was always made with these large thin slices. And they never skimped, they covered the whole pie with it.
But this? This that we were looking at? We were in shock. Well, we thought. Maybe they just ran out of their regular pepperoni and this was a temporary stop gap measure?
We bit into the pizza. Nope. Not the same. Still good. But not the same. And by the way, not only was the pepperoni smaller, but there was less of it. So really, the whole ratio of pepperoni to cheese, to sauce, to crust, was way off and was really impacting the flavor profile. We think that the pepperoni they used before definitely enhanced the taste of the pizza.
We waited a week and ordered it again the following Friday. We got home, opened the box. It’s the same small, miniature pepperoni! No short term stop gap measure here.
We know what’s going on. Clearly ,they downsized the pepperoni in the hopes of upsizing their profit. But at $24.75 a pizza, $6.75 more than surrounding pizza prices, surely their profit margins are already pretty good?
Now we have some more serious rationalization to do. Is this pepperoni pizza with the miniature pepperoni now worth the $25.00 (keep the change, remember?)?
We haven’t answered that question yet. Without a doubt, we plan to ask the owner what’s going on with the pepperoni before making any decisions. Need to make sure we have all the facts before making any major life decisions like where to buy your pizza. Perhaps they are really testing the limits of capitalism. How much can they play with consumer love and demand before said consumer says ‘basta!’
But clearly, pizza inflation combined with pepperoni deflation equals time to reconsider, re-evaluate, and quite possibly, move on.