Salad in Nanaimo

6 restaurants in Nanaimo list salad on their menus. The cheapest is O’Falafel at $4.99, listed as Fattoush Salad. The typical price across town is $10.00, and the dearest we found is $16.00 at Modern Cafe Nanaimo, so the two ends of the list are $11.01 apart, which is 221% more for the same dish. Of the 6 kitchens listed, 2 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 2 sit within a dollar of it and 2 charge more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 49 other areas and compare them all on salad across Canada. The typical price there runs $12.50 at the median, so Nanaimo is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 28 of the 49. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Billie Jax Grill & Bar in Whitby, ON, and the highest best price is $8.99 in Chilliwack, BC. The nearest area with it is Vancouver, about 62 km away, where the best price is $5.95.

Where is the cheapest salad in Nanaimo? O’Falafel, at $4.99 on 1588 Boundary Crescent #18. The same dish reaches $16.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $11.01.

What should salad cost here? About $10.00 is the typical price across the 6 kitchens in Nanaimo that list it. Of the ones listed above, 2 are more than a dollar below that and 2 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 Vancouver, about 62 km away, where the best price is $5.95. That is $0.96 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.