Cheeseburger in San Francisco

19 restaurants in San Francisco list cheeseburger on their menus. The cheapest is Palm House at $8.00. The typical price across town is $14.00, and the dearest we found is $19.00 at Pier 23 Cafe Restaurant & Bar, so the two ends of the list are $11.00 apart, which is 138% more for the same dish. Of the 19 kitchens listed, 8 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 5 sit within a dollar of it and 6 charge more than a dollar over.

We track cheeseburger in 336 other areas and compare them all on cheeseburger across United States. The typical price there runs $11.23 at the median, so San Francisco is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 37 of the 336. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.25 at Dominion Pizza in Lancaster, PA, and the highest best price is $14.99 in Santa Clara, CA. The nearest area with it is Oakland, about 12 mi away, where the best price is $8.49.

Where is the cheapest cheeseburger in San Francisco? Palm House, at $8.00 on 2032 Union St. The same dish reaches $19.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $11.00.

What should cheeseburger cost here? About $14.00 is the typical price across the 19 kitchens in San Francisco that list it. Of the ones listed above, 8 are more than a dollar below that and 6 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 Oakland, about 12 mi away, where the best price is $8.49. That is $0.49 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.