Salad in Charlotte

34 restaurants in Charlotte list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Painted Rooster at $4.00, listed as Pasta Salad. The typical price across town is $10.25, and the dearest we found is $17.95 at Luisa's Brick Over Pizzeria, so the two ends of the list are $13.95 apart, which is 349% more for the same dish. Of the 34 kitchens listed, 15 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 7 sit within a dollar of it and 12 charge more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 1103 other areas and compare them all on salad across United States. The typical price there runs $9.50 at the median, so Charlotte is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 333 of the 1103. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Kennedy Pizza & Fried Chicken in Newark, NJ, and the highest best price is $13.95 in Mount Sinai, NY. The nearest area with it is Concord, about 17 mi away, where the best price is $4.50.

Where is the cheapest salad in Charlotte? Painted Rooster, at $4.00 on 1601 Central Avenue. The same dish reaches $17.95 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $13.95.

What should salad cost here? About $10.25 is the typical price across the 34 kitchens in Charlotte that list it. Of the ones listed above, 15 are more than a dollar below that and 12 are more than a dollar above, so the typical price is a middle rather than a floor.

Is it cheaper nearby? The nearest area we track it in is Concord, about 17 mi away, where the best price is $4.50. That is $0.50 more than the best price here.

Why do the prices differ so much? We compare what each menu calls the same dish, and menus are not identical: portion, cut, sides and the kind of room you are sitting in all ride on the price, and none of that shows up in a number. Part portions and half sizes are kept out of this comparison, and a chain charging the same at several addresses is counted once, so the spread above is between genuinely different kitchens rather than the same one repeated.