Salad in Edison

13 restaurants in Edison list salad on their menus. The cheapest is La Bagel at $6.75, listed as Greek Salad. The typical price across town is $9.25, and the dearest we found is $14.95 at Cafe Gallo Pizzeria & Ristorante, so the two ends of the list are $8.20 apart, which is 121% more for the same dish. Of the 13 kitchens listed, 5 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 4 sit within a dollar of it and 4 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 Edison is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 590 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 Metuchen, about 1 mi away, where the best price is $7.00.

Where is the cheapest salad in Edison? La Bagel, at $6.75 on 1791 Lincoln Highway. The same dish reaches $14.95 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $8.20.

What should salad cost here? About $9.25 is the typical price across the 13 kitchens in Edison that list it. Of the ones listed above, 5 are more than a dollar below that and 4 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 Metuchen, about 1 mi away, where the best price is $7.00. That is $0.25 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.