Sweet Potato Fries in Columbia

3 restaurants in Columbia list sweet potato fries on their menus. The cheapest is Pizza Man at $4.99. The typical price across town is $7.00, and the dearest we found is $9.00 at Union Jacks, so the two ends of the list are $4.01 apart, which is 80% more for the same dish. Of the 3 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 1 sits within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track sweet potato fries in 71 other areas and compare them all on sweet potato fries across United States. The typical price there runs $7.25 at the median, so Columbia is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 36 of the 71. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Tavern in the Square in Woburn, MA, and the highest best price is $8.00 in Edina, MN. The nearest area with it is Reisterstown, about 17 mi away, where the best price is $4.99.

Where is the cheapest sweet potato fries in Columbia? Pizza Man, at $4.99 on 5810 Robert Oliver Pl. The same dish reaches $9.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $4.01.

What should sweet potato fries cost here? About $7.00 is the typical price across the 3 kitchens in Columbia that list it. Of the ones listed above, 1 is more than a dollar below that and 1 is 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 Reisterstown, about 17 mi away, where the best price is $4.99. That is the same as 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.