Salad in Des Moines

22 restaurants in Des Moines list salad on their menus. The cheapest is W-Tao Sushi at $4.00, listed as Green Salad. The typical price across town is $9.99, and the dearest we found is $21.00 at Proudfoot & Bird, so the two ends of the list are $17.00 apart, which is 425% more for the same dish. Of the 22 kitchens listed, 10 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 3 sit within a dollar of it and 9 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 Des Moines is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 412 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 West Des Moines, about 10 mi away, where the best price is $6.00.

Where is the cheapest salad in Des Moines? W-Tao Sushi, at $4.00 on 400 Walnut Street. The same dish reaches $21.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $17.00.

What should salad cost here? About $9.99 is the typical price across the 22 kitchens in Des Moines that list it. Of the ones listed above, 10 are more than a dollar below that and 9 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 West Des Moines, about 10 mi away, where the best price is $6.00. That is $2.00 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.