Salad in Salem

4 restaurants in Salem list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Blue House Family Pizza at $8.00, listed as Garden Salad. The typical price across town is $11.00, and the dearest we found is $11.10 at Tessi's Pizzeria, so the two ends of the list are $3.10 apart, which is 39% more for the same dish. Of the 4 kitchens listed, 2 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 2 sit within a dollar of it and 0 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 Salem is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 167 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 Methuen, about 4 mi away, where the best price is $9.35.

Where is the cheapest salad in Salem? Blue House Family Pizza, at $8.00 on 3 Hampshire St. The same dish reaches $11.10 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $3.10.

What should salad cost here? About $11.00 is the typical price across the 4 kitchens in Salem that list it. Of the ones listed above, 2 are more than a dollar below that and 0 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 Methuen, about 4 mi away, where the best price is $9.35. That is $1.35 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.