French Fries in Columbia

6 restaurants in Columbia list french fries on their menus. The cheapest is Legacy Caribbean Bar & Grill at $4.05. The typical price across town is $5.95, and the dearest we found is $7.95 at By The Fire Pizza & Restaurant, so the two ends of the list are $3.90 apart, which is 96% more for the same dish. Of the 6 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 4 sit within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track french fries in 501 other areas and compare them all on french fries across United States. The typical price there runs $6.49 at the median, so Columbia is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 393 of the 501. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Big Tony's Pizza II in Chicago, IL, and the highest best price is $7.50 in Seaford, NY. The nearest area with it is Charlotte, about 81 mi away, where the best price is $4.50.

Where is the cheapest french fries in Columbia? Legacy Caribbean Bar & Grill, at $4.05 on 215 O'Neil Court. The same dish reaches $7.95 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $3.90.

What should french fries cost here? About $5.95 is the typical price across the 6 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 Charlotte, about 81 mi away, where the best price is $4.50. That is $0.45 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.