Salad in Needham

4 restaurants in Needham list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Blue on Highland at $6.00, listed as Mixed Green Salad. The typical price across town is $13.00, and the dearest we found is $15.00 at Spiga, so the two ends of the list are $9.00 apart, which is 150% more for the same dish. Of the 4 kitchens listed, 2 charge 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 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 Needham is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 32 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 Wellesley, about 3 mi away, where the best price is $9.49.

Where is the cheapest salad in Needham? Blue on Highland, at $6.00 on 882 Highland Avenue. The same dish reaches $15.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $9.00.

What should salad cost here? About $13.00 is the typical price across the 4 kitchens in Needham that list it. Of the ones listed above, 2 are 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 Wellesley, about 3 mi away, where the best price is $9.49. That is $3.49 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.